Three men were brutally whipped 42 times today for drinking alcohol and violating Sharia law on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
The footage showed an intimidating executioner, or ‘algojo’, clutching a rattan before carrying out the public flogging of four men in front of Islamic court officials.
Dressed in brown robes, the algojo beat the prisoners’ backs with a wooden baton in the center of a white-tiled room.
Two of the convicts were seen dressed in white robes, while the other two wore red blouses with the name of the prosecution printed on them.
They were led to the center of the room to sit on a blue rug, heads bowed, before each took their turn to receive their respective punishments.
A man has been severely whipped with 42 strokes of the rod for consuming alcohol and violating Islamic law on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Pictured: A man is whipped with the rod in Banda Aceh, Indonesia
The footage showed an intimidating executioner, known as an ‘algojo’, clutching a rattan before carrying out the public flogging of four men in front of Islamic court officials.
The Algojos, dressed in brown robes, beat the prisoners’ backs with a wooden cane in the center of a white-tiled room. A man was hit 42 times
Banda Aceh is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of Aceh and is located on the island of Sumatra, home to the Acehnese people.
Aceh is the only province in Indonesia that has implemented Sharia law and considers gambling, alcohol, lesbian, gay and bisexual relationships, and sex outside of marriage as violations of the law.
Punishments for violating draconian laws include lashings, fines and imprisonment. In 2009, there was a legal initiative to also allow stoning, but it was vetoed by the then governor of Aceh.
The four Acehnese men received between 19 and 42 lashes for drinking alcohol, known as “khamar” in sharia law. A police officer with a microphone monitored the punishments.
The three men who received the 42 lashes were named in the local press as M. Fais Akbar, Aulia Syahputra and Yusdi, while Cukri Ramadhan received 19.
Before the punishment was carried out, all the men underwent a medical check by a medical team. All were considered ready to serve their sentences.
The executing prosecutor then called the condemned one by one to the center of the room, where the sentence of whipping was carried out.
Kompas reported that the whipping stopped for one of the men after he groaned in pain after 10 lashes. The doctors gave him something to drink and also checked his condition before he continued the punishment.
“The execution of the flogging sentence against four people convicted of violating khamar or being drunk has been completed today,” said the head of the Banda Aceh District Prosecution Office after the trial.
Supporters of Islamic penal law argue that such punishments are legal under the special autonomy granted to Aceh.
Two of the men in white robes are seen arriving at the building in Banda Aceh where they were flogged for violating the region’s Sharia law on alcohol consumption.
The four men were seen sitting in front of Islamic court officials and police before the punishment, which was carried out in the white-tiled courtroom.
Supporters of Islamic penal law argue that such punishments are legal under the special autonomy granted to Aceh.
Critics have called on officials to abolish the use of spanking as punishment, while opposing the criminalization of sex outside of marriage and homosexuality.
Amnesty International, which has urged the region to end the practice of whipping gay men, said 108 floggings were carried out in 2015 and 100 in 2016.
He said Sharia law was applied to non-Muslims for the first time in 2016, when a Christian woman was sentenced to 28 strokes for selling alcohol.
In 2022, a woman was reported to have received 100 lashes for adultery, while the man she had the affair with only received 15 lashes.