"The law is to safeguard human dignity"
A new law in the conservative Indonesian province of Aceh will punish from Friday those thought to have had gay sex with 100 lashes from a cane.
Although gay sex is not illegal according to Indonesian national law, Aceh has some autonomy from the central Jakarta government and has adopted a form of Shari‘a law.
Provincial Sharia chief Syahrizal Abbas told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that anal sex between men and “the rubbing of body parts between women for stimulation” was illegal in the western province under a bylaw regulation passed in 2014. The law is only now coming into effect, he said, as the province took a year to educate the public regarding its contents.
“The law is to safeguard human dignity. It is to protect Aceh’s Muslims from committing immoral acts,” Syahrizal said on Thursday, AFP reports. All Muslims, including foreigners, will now be subject to it.
Two teenage women in Aceh accused of having a lesbian relationship were told earlier this month to undergo “rehabilitation” counseling by psychologists, but were not charged as the antigay law had yet to come into effect, according to the Associated Press.
The new legislation also makes adultery punishable with 100 cane lashes, while accusing someone of adultery without adequate proof warrants 80.
Human-rights activists have called the new law “inhumane” and “cruel.”
[AFP]