A married woman in Indonesia received a hundred strokes of cane for engaging in adultery while the man involved received only 15 strokes.
The woman from Aceh province received the heftier punishment after confessing to the investigators that she had had sex out of marriage while the man in question, who is also married, denied engaging in the act thus making it difficult to prove whether he was guilty or not.
“During the trial, he admitted nothing, denying all accusations. Thus, [judges] are not able to prove whether he is guilty,” Ivan Najjar Alavi, the head of general investigation division at East Aceh prosecutors office, told reporters after the public flogging of the offenders.
The judges however found the man guilty of showing affection to a woman who is not his wife after the two were caught at a palm oil plantation by the locals in 2018.
Initially the Sharia Supreme Court in Aceh had sentenced him to 30 strokes of cane but after appealing the ruling, his sentence was reduced to 15 strokes of cane.
The caning was briefly stopped since the woman could not bear the pain as dozens watched and recorded.
The Human Rights Watch condemned the punishment and termed it barbaric. Since 2017, Indonesian president Joko Widodo has been calling upon the region to stop using the punishment
Aceh is the only region in Muslim-majority Indonesia to impose Islamic law, which allows whipping for charges including gambling, adultery, drinking alcohol, and gay sex.
In October last year, a 19-year old girl fainted after being flogged a hundred times for engaging sex with an 18-year old boy who was not her husband, in the same region.
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