“It is a terrifying act of discrimination”, Amnesty International said. Local authorities think exactly the opposite 👀…
A kiss. That was enough for a 25-year-old woman and her 22-year-old partner to end up kneeling in a public square in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, receiving 21 lashes each with a rattan cane.
It all began on February 27, when they streamed a TikTok live kissing inside a car. The video went viral, someone reported them to the religious police, and in April they ended up in jail. On July 2, a sharia court took them to Bustanussalatin City Park to carry out the sentence in front of more than one hundred people.
Some spectators asked them to hit “harder”. Muhammad Rizal, head of the city’s religious police, confirmed it bluntly: it was the first time they had punished in this way an offense committed on social media. Amnesty International called it torture. In Aceh, they call it justice.