Two men in Indonesia publicly caned for consensual gay sex


              FILE - In this Monday, March 20, 2017, file photo, a Sharia law official whips a man convicted of adultery with a rattan cane in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, when two men each face up to 100 stroke of the cane after neighbors reported them to Islamic religious police for having gay sex. Indonesian police detained dozens of men Sunday, May 21 in a weekend raid on a gay sauna in the capital Jakarta, another sign of growing hostility to homosexuality in the world's most populous Muslim nation. (AP Photo/Heri Juanda, File)
FILE - In this Monday, March 20, 2017, file photo, a Sharia law official whips a man convicted of adultery with a rattan cane in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, when two men each face up to 100 stroke of the cane after neighbors reported them to Islamic religious police for having gay sex. Indonesian police detained dozens of men Sunday, May 21 in a weekend raid on a gay sauna in the capital Jakarta, another sign of growing hostility to homosexuality in the world's most populous Muslim nation. (AP Photo/Heri Juanda, File)

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Two men in Indonesia's Aceh province were publicly caned dozens of times Tuesday for consensual gay sex, a punishment that intensifies an anti-gay backlash and which rights advocates denounced as "medieval torture."

Hundreds of people packed the courtyard of a mosque to witness the caning, which was the first time that Aceh, the only province in Indonesia to practice Shariah law, has caned people for homosexuality.

The men, aged 20 and 23, were arrested in March after neighborhood vigilantes in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, suspected them of being gay and broke into their rented room to catch them having sex.

A Shariah court last week sentenced each man to 85 strokes, but they were caned 83 times after a remission for time spent in prison. Four heterosexual couples also were caned Tuesday, receiving a far lesser number of strokes for affection outside marriage.

Members of the crowd cheered and shouted as the men were whipped across the back and winced with pain. A team of five took turns to inflict the punishment, relieving one another after every 20 strokes for one of the men and 40 for the other.

With the exception of Aceh, homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, but the country's low-profile LGBT community has been under siege in the past year.

Prejudice has been fanned by stridently anti-gay comments from politicians and Islamic hard-liners, and a case before the country's top court is seeking to criminalize gay sex and sex outside marriage.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the public caning was torture under international law and called on Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to intervene.

Sarojini Mutia Irfan, a female university student who witnessed the caning, said it was necessary as a deterrent.

"What they have done is like a virus that can harm people's morale, and this kind of public punishment is an attempt to stop the spread of the virus to other communities in Aceh," she said.

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