Two men were publicly flogged 76 times each in Indonesia’s conservative province of Aceh on Tuesday after they were found guilty of sexual relations by a court operating under strict Islamic law.

Gay sex is outlawed in Aceh, which imposes a version of sharia, the Islamic legal code, but it is not illegal elsewhere in the world’s most populous Muslim majority country.

The men were part of a group of 10 who were flogged on Tuesday at a park in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, for a range of alleged crimes.

The pair were flogged separately with a rattan stick as a small crowd watched, according to an AFP journalist present.

Their initial sentences of 80 lashes each were reduced by four for four months spent in detention.

In April, local sharia police found the two men together at a public toilet in the same park where they were later flogged, said Roslina A. Djalil, head of Banda Aceh sharia police’s law enforcement.

“A member of the public saw suspicious people and reported it,” Roslina said.

Amnesty International condemned the punishment.

“The criminalisation of same-sex conduct… has no place in a just and humane society,” Amnesty’s regional research director Montse Ferrer said in a statement.

Three women and five men were also flogged on Tuesday after being found guilty of sex outside marriage, being in close proximity to members of the opposite sex, and online gambling.

Caning retains strong support among Aceh’s population as a common punishment for offences including drinking alcohol and adultery.

The region started using religious law after it was granted special autonomy in 2001 as Jakarta tried to quell a long-running separatist insurgency.

AFP