In Indonesia’s Aceh province, the country’s only region enforcing strict Sharia law, a 21-year-old unmarried couple was publicly caned 140 times each on Thursday, January 29, for having sex outside marriage and consuming alcohol.
The punishment combined 100 lashes for sex without marriage and 40 for drinking, marking one of the severest canings since Aceh adopted the Islamic criminal code in 2001.
During the public flogging in Banda Aceh, held at a public park and attended by dozens of people, the woman winced in pain, cried, and fainted after dozens of strokes from a rattan cane wielded by female officers. She was then carried off on a stretcher to an ambulance.
The man also received the full 140 lashes for ‘sex outside of marriage and alcohol’.
Aceh’s Sharia police defended the punishment as necessary enforcement, with the local chief justifying the punishment as valid and ‘Islamic’. However, human rights groups condemned it as cruel and inhumane, calling for better regulations and support for those punished.
The public caning event organised by the Sharia police also had other ‘criminals’. One police official also received 23 canings for being caught ‘in close proximity to a woman’.
In 2025, a gay couple were flogged 75 times each after their relationship was found out by the Sharia police.
