Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province has once again carried out mass public caning.
On May 12, the Southeast Aceh Prosecutor’s Office punished around 15 convicts by whipping the group with more than 200 strokes of the rattan cane collectively. This is the highest number of beatings in a single session in the regency, and indicates that Sharia sanctions in Aceh continue to be enforced by law enforcement with apparently strong public support.
Of the 15 offenders, only one was a woman, but she received the harshest punishment of all: 100 strokes of the cane after being found guilty of the crime of adultery. The other 14 male criminals were sentenced to between six and ten strokes for the gambling crime.
The offenders were all convicted under Aceh law. Qanounor local regulations, which in turn fall under JinayatAceh’s Islamic criminal law, which differs from the Indonesian Criminal Code as a whole.
Qanun Jinayat only applies in Aceh province and regulates crimes such as adultery, gambling, proximity between single men and women, sexual harassment, rape and alcohol consumption.
Some of these offenses, such as gambling and adultery, are also criminalized in the rest of the archipelago, while others, such as drinking alcohol and mixing unmarried men and women, are not.
According to the Indonesian Penal Code, punishments for crimes are fines or prison sentences rather than flogging, which is only permitted in Aceh.
Why does Aceh have Sharia law?
Aceh, a predominantly Muslim region, enjoys a semi-autonomous status from the rest of Indonesia, agreed under the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2005, following the devastating 2004 tsunami.
The memorandum of understanding was part of a peace deal signed after decades of civil conflict in Aceh between local separatists, who wanted Aceh to become fully independent from Indonesia, and law enforcement agencies, including the Indonesian military. The conflict, which lasted from the 1970s until 2015, left thousands dead.
Under the MoU, Aceh was allowed to follow Sharia law and adopt Sharia-compliant punishments, including caning, which had already been introduced in the province in 2004.
According to Aceh provincial administration spokesperson Teuku Kamaruzzaman, flogging, using a long, flexible rattan cane, is a common punishment, with illegal gambling being one of the most common offenses.
“The punishment [of caning] is applied to all those who violate the law in Aceh,” he explained.
“Non-Muslims can choose to go to prison or be whipped.”
The number of strokes an offender receives depends on the crime and the length of time spent in prison, with the number reduced based on time served. Punishments take place in public in the hope that they will act as a deterrent and shame the person being whipped so that they will not reoffend.
“May the punishment make the convicts realize their wrongdoing,” said the head of the Southeast Aceh Prosecutor’s Office, Mohammad Purnomo Satriyadi, following the most recent case.
“For the general public, this is a reminder to stay away from crimes prohibited by Aceh Qanun.”
Is flogging a deterrent?
According to Kamaruzzaman, flogging has a deterrent effect and has been proven to reduce crime.
“Caning is very effective. Flogging makes the people of Aceh more orderly,” he said.
He added that there had been little public resistance to sharia sanctions across the province and that the majority of residents supported caning.
However, director of the Center for Human Rights Studies at Medan State University, Majda El Muntaz, said it was necessary to “test the effectiveness of flogging, to determine whether it has a positive impact on social order and a deterrent effect.”
“Therefore, the main principle of human rights, that of non-discriminatory access to justice and the administration of justice, must be manifested in the implementation of Qanun Jinayat in Aceh, especially with regard to vulnerable groups of women and children,” Majda said.
As for vulnerable groups, horrific footage was released in January this year in which a couple was publicly beaten 140 times for having premarital sex and drinking alcohol.
Under sharia law in Aceh, sex outside of marriage is punishable by 100 strokes of the cane, while drinking alcohol is punishable by 40 strokes of the cane, and the cumulative punishment is the highest number of strokes ever given to offenders in the province’s history.
After the flogging, the woman, who was only 21 at the time, reportedly passed out after being beaten by three different female police officers and had to be carried to an ambulance.
Yet while Aceh may seem like an anomaly in Indonesia, flogging is also used throughout Southeast Asia, in countries like Malaysia and Singapore, with the latter appearing to increasingly embrace the use of the cane.
On May 6, the Singapore government announced that caning would be imposed on male students found guilty of harassment and would apply to male children as young as nine years old.
“Schools will consider factors such as the maturity of the student and whether caning will help them learn from their mistakes and understand the seriousness of what they have done,” Singapore’s Education Minister Desmond Lee said of the new plans to defeat bullies.
Abuse of human rights?
Yet, in addition to scant academic evidence or research showing that caning has a deterrent effect, human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly criticized the practice.
In 2025, two men aged 20 and 21 were beaten in Aceh, after being found guilty of homosexual relations. The two men were sentenced to 76 strokes of the cane each, homosexual acts being prohibited by Sharia law.
After the caning, Montse Ferrer, regional research director at Amnesty International, called the public flogging a “disturbing act of discrimination and state-sanctioned cruelty.”
“This punishment is a horrific reminder of the institutionalized stigma and abuse faced by LGBTQ+ people in Aceh,” she said. “Consensual homosexual activity between adults should never be criminalized. Punishments such as flogging are cruel, inhumane and degrading and may amount to torture under international law.”
Ferrer also argued that Indonesia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council and party to the Convention Against Torture, and therefore needed to align its laws with its constitutional commitments to equality and non-discrimination.
“The criminalization of homosexual relations and corporal punishment has no place in a just and humane society,” Ferrer said.