The 27 and 29-year-old males were sentenced to 77 lashes under Aceh, Indonesia’s sharia law.
Human rights groups have condemned the public caning of two gay men in Aceh, Indonesia as brutal and medieval.
In what is believed to be the third case of public authorities in Aceh carrying out caning of gay men as part of sharia law, a pair of 27- and 29-year-old males were sentenced to be caned 77 times publicly for their alleged offences.
The Guardian reports the pair were dragged from their room by an angry mob of vigilantes who claimed they had witnessed the men having sex.
The pair were then taken into custody and tried in court for their alleged crime. They were sentenced to 80 strokes by a Shariah court last month but were flogged 77 times because of time spent in prison.
The pair’s sentence was carried out on Thursday, where they were publicly beaten with a rattan stick in front of a crowd of onlookers.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Right Watch’s Asia division, said Aceh’s authorities were guilty of torture. Speaking to The Guardian, he said “[The authorities] must be universally condemned for this brutal, absolutely medieval punishment for an act that should never have been criminalised in the first place,” he said.
Homosexuality is not illegal across Indonesia, but authorities in Aceh are allowed to cane people for alleged gay sex acts after it was given authority to implement sharia law in 2001 as part of an autonomy deal with the national government.
