A masked and hooded person canes a woman in
Aceh for selling food during Ramadan. A woman who was gang raped last week
faces the indignity of a public caning for having extramarital sex.
Banda Aceh. A woman in Aceh who was gang raped last week after
being accused of having extramarital sex now faces the indignity of a public
caning for the offense of having an affair.
“We want
the couple to be caned because they violated the religious bylaw on sexual
relations,” Ibrahim Latif, the head of the Shariah office in the eastern town
of Langsa, said of the woman and her companion, a 40-year-old married man, who
were raided by a group of men last Wednesday night at the woman’s home.
The
woman was raped by
the eight vigilantes, three of whom have since been arrested. Her companion
was tied up and beaten. The pair were also doused with sewage by the attackers,
who later took them to the Shariah police, or Wilayatul Hisbah.
Ibrahim
said the fact that the woman had been raped would not be taken into
consideration in determining the punishment for the religious crime that she
was accused of committing.
“They
have to be [caned] as a form of justice because the rapists will also be
processed, but in a criminal court,” he said. “Besides, they’ve confessed to
having sex on several previous occasions, even though the man is married and
has five children.”
Langsa
Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Hariadi and the chief of detectives Adj. Comr. M.
Firdaus were not immediately available for comment.
Under
the partial Shariah exercised in Aceh, the woman and her companion face up to nine
strokes of the cane each. The rapists would have faced the same number of
lashes had they been dragged through the Shariah process.
Three of
them, including a 13-year-old boy, have been arrested by police, who are still
hunting for the five others.
They are
accused of gang raping the woman after barging into her house late last
Wednesday and accusing her of having illegal sexual relations with the man.
After
assaulting the man and raping the woman, they marched the pair to the Shariah
police. It was only during their interrogation of the victim that officers
found out she had been raped.
An
official from Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s biggest Islamic organization, has
backed the call to cane the couple, but says the rapists must also face Shariah
charges in addition to criminal ones.
Teungku
Faisal Ali, the head of the NU’s Aceh chapter, told the Jakarta Globe that “the
punishment for the mob that raped the victim must be much harsher because they
have set back efforts to uphold Shariah in Aceh.”
He also
urged residents to leave Shariah enforcement up to the WH and not enforce the
regulations themselves.
“If
anyone sees any violation of Shariah, they must report it to the Shariah
police, in accordance with the prevailing standards and procedures,” Faisal said.
He also
bemoaned what he called the increasing prevalence of mob violence in Aceh,
particularly against those accused of Shariah violations.
This is
not the first case in Aceh of a rape being committed against a woman accused of
inappropriate conduct with an unrelated male.
A
20-year-old university student was raped by three
Shariah police officers in Langsa in January 2010 after being caught riding
on a motorcycle with her boyfriend.
The
town’s Shariah police chief, Syahril, was subsequently fired and two of the
perpetrators were later sentenced to
serve eight years in prison each. The third perpetrator has not been
caught. Jakarta
Globe (AFP Photo/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
(NOTE FROM KERRY. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE
AUSTRALIA GAVE ONE BILLION DOLLARS IN AID TO AFTER THE TSUNAMI)
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