maximus otter
Recovering policeman
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2001
- Messages
- 15,186
ACEH, Indonesia – It’s just another day in Banda Aceh, the capital city of Indonesia’s only Shariah-regulated province and one of its poorest.
Officials—mostly men—from the Sharia police are gathered at Taman Sari, a popular public park at the heart of the city. Among the scant crowd is a group of college girls and photojournalists jostling to get the perfect shot. In the middle of the park’s arena, a woman cloaked in a white jilbab with her face covered with a mask, is seated on her knees on a carpet. She’s accused of a crime that wouldn’t even be considered a crime anywhere else in Indonesia: meeting a man who is not her husband.
As an officer reads out the crime, another woman, dressed head-to-toe in a brown jilbab with her face covered, gets ready with a cane next to her.
On cue, the woman in brown delivers swift blows on the accused’s back 22 times. Once it’s over, the accused gets up and leaves. Three more floggings of men by men for other crimes follow.
Public floggings are business as usual in Aceh, a uniquely conservative province in a country that has the world’s largest Muslim population. Floggings are highly publicised and usually well attended. What’s uncommon, though, is flogging delivered by a woman, a contract employee of the Sharia police.
In 2020, just before the pandemic gripped the world, Aceh’s Sharia police officially unveiled an all-women flogging squad—a first in the country where the punishment has drawn international attention, and criticism, for years.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg9g7/aceh-indonesia-women-floggers-sharia-police
maximus otter
Officials—mostly men—from the Sharia police are gathered at Taman Sari, a popular public park at the heart of the city. Among the scant crowd is a group of college girls and photojournalists jostling to get the perfect shot. In the middle of the park’s arena, a woman cloaked in a white jilbab with her face covered with a mask, is seated on her knees on a carpet. She’s accused of a crime that wouldn’t even be considered a crime anywhere else in Indonesia: meeting a man who is not her husband.
As an officer reads out the crime, another woman, dressed head-to-toe in a brown jilbab with her face covered, gets ready with a cane next to her.
On cue, the woman in brown delivers swift blows on the accused’s back 22 times. Once it’s over, the accused gets up and leaves. Three more floggings of men by men for other crimes follow.
Public floggings are business as usual in Aceh, a uniquely conservative province in a country that has the world’s largest Muslim population. Floggings are highly publicised and usually well attended. What’s uncommon, though, is flogging delivered by a woman, a contract employee of the Sharia police.
In 2020, just before the pandemic gripped the world, Aceh’s Sharia police officially unveiled an all-women flogging squad—a first in the country where the punishment has drawn international attention, and criticism, for years.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg9g7/aceh-indonesia-women-floggers-sharia-police
maximus otter