Police in Indonesia’s Aceh province say a woman gang-raped by eight men, including a 13-year-old, will face caning for adultery under local sharia law
BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – An Indonesian woman who was gang-raped by eight males, including a 13-year-old boy, after they accused her of adultery now faces public caning under Aceh province’s sharia law, the Jakarta Globe reported on Wednesday.
Vigilantes raped the 25-year-old woman last week in the eastern Aceh town of Langsa after they raided her house and allegedly caught her about to have sex with a 40-year-old married man, the Globe said in an earlier report, quoting the town’s police chief Hariadi.
They also beat up the man and doused both in sewage before marching them to the sharia police. It was only during questioning that the victim revealed she had been gang-raped. Three of the attackers have been arrested.
Ibrahim Latif, head of the sharia office in the town, told the Globe the couple would be caned as they had violated religious regulations on sexual relations.
He said the fact that the woman had been raped would not be taken into consideration in determining the punishment.
“They have to be (caned) as a form of justice,” he was quoted as saying. “They’ve confessed to having sex on several previous occasions, even though the man is married and has five children.”
Aceh, in the far west of Indonesia - the world’s most populous Muslim nation - is the only province which follows sharia law, although some districts elsewhere in the country have introduced sharia-inspired bylaws.
Rights groups have criticised the implementation of two laws in Aceh - one prohibiting unmarried individuals of different sexes from being together in certain circumstances, known as “seclusion law”, and another that imposes public dress requirements on Muslims - saying that they violate rights and are often enforced abusively.
A 2010 report by Human Rights Watch told how three sharia police officers raped a 19-year-old student in custody after she and her boyfriend were detained on an isolated road in the middle of the day and accused of committing “seclusion”.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
