BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: A group of amorous couples and alleged sex workers were publicly whipped for breaking Islamic law in Indonesia’s Aceh Friday, just a week after the province pledged to move the widely condemned practice indoors.
More than a thousand people, including dozens of tourists from neighboring Malaysia, jeered and screamed abuse at the group as they were flogged outside a mosque in the capital Banda Aceh.
The three men and five women — who included several college students — were found guilty of violating religious law by either showing affection in public or for offering sexual services online, officials said.
Aceh is the only province in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country that imposes Islamic law and flogging is a common punishment for a range of offenses — from gambling, to drinking alcohol to having gay sex or relations outside of marriage.
The conservative region on the northern tip of Sumatra island passed a regulation a week ago that would see criminals whipped only behind prison walls. It was not clear when the new rule would come into effect.
The move was in response to a wave of international criticism over the practice, which has included flogging members of the region’s LGBT community and, in some cases, non-Muslims.
Rights groups have derided it as cruel and last year President Joko Widodo called for an end to public whippings in Aceh.
Around 98 percent of the province’s five million residents are Muslims, subject to religious law, including the public whippings which came into practice around 2005.
The new rule has generated protests from conservative groups who see public whippings as having a strong deterrent effect on crime.
Banda Aceh’s deputy mayor Zainal Arifin said Friday’s flogging was not an act of defiance against the new rules.
“We understand that the regulation has not yet come into effect and the prison is not yet ready to (host floggings) so that is why we are still doing it” in public, he said.
“Until the new regulation is officially in place we will carry on as usual.”
Couples whipped in Indonesia’s Aceh for public show of affection
Couples whipped in Indonesia’s Aceh for public show of affection
US border agent shoots and wounds two people in Portland
- The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement
A US immigration agent shot and wounded a man and a woman in Portland, Oregon, authorities said on Thursday, leading local officials to call for calm given public outrage over the ICE shooting death of a Minnesota woman a day earlier.
“We understand the heightened emotion and tension many are feeling in the wake of the shooting in Minneapolis, but I am asking the community to remain calm as we work to learn more,” Portland police chief Bob Day said in a statement.
The Portland shooting unfolded Thursday afternoon as US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The statement said the driver, a suspected Venezuelan gang member, attempted to “weaponize” his vehicle and run over the agents. In response, DHS said, “an agent fired a defensive shot” and the driver and a passenger drove away.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the circumstances of the incident.
Portland police said that the shooting took place near a medical clinic in eastern Portland. Six minutes after arriving at the scene and determining federal agents were involved in the shooting, police were informed that two people with gunshot wounds — a man and a woman — were asking for help at a location about 2 miles (3 km) to the northeast of the medical clinic.
Police said they applied tourniquets to the man and woman, who were taken to a hospital. Their condition was unknown.
The shooting came just a day after a federal agent from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a separate agency within the Department of Homeland Security, fatally shot a 37-year-old mother of three in her car in Minneapolis.
That shooting has prompted two days of protests in Minneapolis. Officers from both ICE and Border Patrol have been deployed in cities across the United States as part of Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
While the aggressive enforcement operations have been cheered by the president’s supporters, Democrats and civil rights activists have decried the posture as an unnecessary provocation.
US officials contend criminal suspects and anti-Trump activists have increasingly used their cars as weapons, though video evidence has sometimes contradicted their claims.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a statement his city was now grappling with violence at the hands of federal agents and that “we cannot sit by while constitutional protections erode and bloodshed mounts.”
He called on ICE to halt all its operations in the city until an investigation can be completed.
“Federal militarization undermines effective, community-based public safety, and it runs counter to the values that define our region,” Wilson said. “I will use every legal and legislative tool available to protect our residents’ civil and human rights.”
