Indonesia’s conservative Aceh Province has once again carried out a mass public caning.

On May 12, the Southeast Aceh Prosecutor’s Office punished some 15 convicts by flogging the group with over 200 strokes of the rattan cane collectively. It was the highest number of strokes meted out in a single session in the regency, and signaled that Sharia punishments in Aceh continue to be enacted by law enforcement with seemingly strong public support.

Of the 15 offenders, only one was a woman, yet she received the harshest penalty of all – 100 strokes of the cane after she was found guilty of the crime of adultery. The 14 other male criminals were sentenced to between six and 10 strokes for the crime of gambling.

The offenders had all been convicted under Aceh’s Qanun, or local bylaws, which in turn fall under the umbrella of Jinayat, Aceh’s Islamic criminal law, which differs from Indonesia’s wider Criminal Code.

Qanun Jinayat only applies in Aceh Province and regulates crimes such as adultery, gambling, proximity between unmarried men and women, sexual harassment, rape, and the consumption of alcohol.

Some of these crimes, such as gambling and adultery, are also criminalized across the rest of the archipelago, while others, such as drinking alcohol and the mixing of unmarried men and women, are not.

According to Indonesia’s Criminal Code, punishments for crimes are fines or jail time rather than flogging, which is only allowed in Aceh.

Why Does Aceh Have Sharia Law?

Aceh, a Muslim-majority area, has semi-autonomous status from the rest of Indonesia, which was agreed upon under the Helsinki Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2005, following the devastating tsunami of 2004.

The MoU 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, including the Indonesian army. The conflict, which ran from the 1970s until 2015, left thousands dead.

As part of the MoU, Aceh was allowed to follow Sharia law and enact Sharia punishments, including caning, which had already been introduced into 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 frequent offenses.

“The punishment [of caning] is applied to everyone who violates the law in Aceh,” he explained.

“For non-Muslims, they can choose to go to prison or be flogged.”

The number of strokes of the cane that an offender receives is dependent on the crime and time spent in prison, with the number reduced for time served. Punishments take place in public in the hope that they will have a deterrent effect and shame the person flogged so that they do not reoffend.

“May the punishment make the convicts realize their wrongdoings,” the head of Southeast Aceh’s Prosecutor’s Office, Mohammad Purnomo Satriyadi, said following the most recent case.

“For the public in general, this is a reminder to stay away from crimes forbidden by the Aceh Qanun.”

Is Flogging a Deterrent?

According to Kamaruzzaman, flogging has a deterrent effect and has been proven to reduce crime.

“Caning is quite effective. Flogging makes the Aceh people more orderly,” he said.

He added that there had been little public resistance to Sharia punishments across the province, and that the majority of residents supported caning.

However, the head of the Human Rights Study Center at Medan State University, Majda El Muntaz, said that there was a need to “test the effectiveness of flogging, whether it has positive impacts on social order and deterrent effect.”

“Therefore, the main human rights principle, that of non-discriminatory access to justice and justice administration, must be manifested in the implementation of Qanun Jinayat in Aceh, especially with regard to vulnerable groups of women and children,” Majda said.

With regards to vulnerable groups, gruesome footage emerged in January of this year, when a couple was publicly caned 140 times for having sex before marriage and drinking alcohol.

Under Sharia law in Aceh, sex outside marriage carries a penalty of 100 strokes of the cane, while alcohol consumption is punishable by 40 strokes, and the cumulative sentence was the highest number of strokes ever handed down to offenders in the history of the province.

After the flogging took place, the woman, who was just 21-years-old at the time, reportedly fainted after being beaten by three different female officers, and had to be carried to an ambulance.

Yet while Aceh may seem an anomaly in Indonesia, flogging is also used across Southeast Asia in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, the latter of which appears to be increasingly embracing the use of the cane.

On May 6, the Singaporean government announced that caning would be handed down to male students who had been found guilty of bullying, and would be applicable to male children as young as nine.

“Schools will consider factors such as the maturity of the student and if caning will help the student learn from his mistake and understand the gravity of what he has done,” Singaporean Minister of Education, Desmond Lee, said of the new plans to beat bullies.

Human Rights Abuse?

Yet in addition to scant academic evidence or research that caning acts as a deterrent, human rights bodies such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have repeatedly slammed the practice.

In 2025, two men aged 20 and 21 were caned in Aceh, having been found guilty of having same-sex relations. The pair were handed a punishment of 76 strokes of the cane each, as same-sex acts are prohibited under Sharia law.

Following the caning, Amnesty International’s Regional Research Director Montse Ferrer called the public flogging “a disturbing act of state-sanctioned discrimination and cruelty.”

“This punishment is a horrifying reminder of the institutionalized stigma and abuse faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in Aceh,” she said. “Consensual same-sex activity between adults should never be criminalized. Punishments such as flogging are cruel, inhuman and degrading and may amount to torture under international law.”

Ferrer also argued that Indonesia is a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council and a state party to the Convention Against Torture, and that therefore it needed to align its laws with its constitutional commitments to equality and non-discrimination.

“The criminalization of same-sex conduct and corporal punishment has no place in a just and humane society,” Ferrer said.