Indonesia's Aceh Canes Two For Adultery

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (Reuters) - Two people in Indonesia's Aceh have been caned for adultery, the latest case of public punishments since courts in the province were allowed to implement Islamic sharia law. Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation but only Aceh has the right to adopt sharia law in the judicial system.

Aceh courts received that freedom in 2003 as part of an autonomy package Jakarta offered in an attempt to quell separatist passions in the province, where thousands died in a long-running insurgency.

"Both of them were arrested by sharia police in a kiosk in Sawang district two weeks ago after they were caught in an intimate situation," Tengku Marnus Labsyar, head of the South Aceh Sharia's office, told Reuters by telephone.

He said the woman was a 23-year-old widow, while the married man was a 35-year-old teacher.

Television footage showed first the man and then the woman, both dressed in white, given nine and seven strokes respectively with a rattan stick on a platform surrounded by a jeering crowd in the compound of the Kasik Putih mosque in Samadua, a town in the south of Aceh.

The woman was led away sobbing after receiving her punishment from a blindfolded man man wearing a red robe. The caning took place on Friday.

Aceh has previously caned people under sharia law for gambling and stealing. The rulings by sharia courts have to be approved by Aceh's governor.

Caning is a common judicial practice in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.

Most Indonesian Muslims are considered relatively moderate and the government is officially secular, but Aceh is a more staunchly Muslim province.

Located on the northern tip of Sumatra island, Aceh is dubbed the "Verandah of Mecca" because Islam first entered Indonesia from there centuries ago.

Analysts say Aceh sharia courts are unlikely to use stronger penalties such as stoning for adultery or amputation for theft.

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http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060731-081950-5269r

Women, Poor Suffer Under Islamic Law in Indonesia's Aceh
AFP

July 31, 2006

JAKARTA --  A rising moral vigilantism that has flared with the gradual implementation of Islamic law in Indonesia's Aceh province has victimized women and the poor, a think tank said in a report released Monday.

Enforcing Islamic or Sharia law has also created murky divisions of labor between roaming squads of vice police and ordinary police that may pose longer-term security difficulties, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) said.

Aceh, which was gripped by a 29-year separatist conflict that ended formally last year after the province was lashed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, is the only part of Indonesia with the legal right to apply Sharia law.

While it has long been a staunchly Muslim heartland, since 1999 it has slowly put in place an institutional framework for Sharia enforcement. Islamic courts were given approval to extend their reach to criminal justice in 2001, when a special autonomy law was passed.

Today caning and fines are used as punishments for the consumption and sale of alcohol, gambling and illicit relations between men and women.

While Sharia officials believe that strict enforcement will help bring broader goals like peace, reconstruction, and reconciliation, the ICG said that officials tasked with codifying it are "inadvertently producing something different."

This, the group said, was "a religious bureaucracy committed to its own expansion; a focus on legislating and enforcing morality; and a quiet power struggle with secular law enforcement that may have long-term implications for both security sector and legal reform in Aceh."

"There's a wide gulf between the popularity of Islamic law in principle and the unpopularity of how it's being enforced," ICG Southeast Asia project director Sidney Jones said in a statement. "But for many, that may be beside the point: the real issue is whether man's law or God's will prevail."

The most problematic institution set up under Islamic law has been the wilayatul hisbah (WH), the vice and virtue patrol tasked with monitoring compliance with Sharia, the ICG said.

"Its members are highly unpopular; even those who support broader application of Sharia in Aceh acknowledge that the WH are poorly recruited and trained," the report said.

It cautioned that donors may be unwilling to continue funding police reform in Aceh if the WH plays a more active role.

In one incident, the WH seized three female activists attending a UN Development Program workshop in Banda Aceh for not wearing headscarves - which are not a tradition in Aceh - as they chatted outside their hotel rooms late one evening in February.

They were forced to sign statements admitting their guilt and to listen to a 45-minute lecture on the need to live according to Sharia.

"Women complain that they are disproportionately the targets of WH raids, with far more operations against them for not wearing jilbabs than against men for not attending Friday prayer," the ICG said.

"The sense is high in Aceh that women and the poor are the primary target of Sharia enforcement, even as support for expanding Sharia seems to remain strong particularly in rural areas."

The report also noted that WH's existence encouraged citizens to report their friends and neighbors.

"Not only does this give a new status to the local gossip, but it leads to a kind of religion vigilantism, with conservative Muslim groups taking enforcement into its own hands," it said.

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