Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #485

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Man Who Advocated Caning For Adultery Gets Caned For Adultery
By Rob Picheta, CNN
(CNN) An Indonesian man has been pub- licly flogged for adultery, under a draconian law he helped cre- ate.
Mukhlis, a mem-
ber of the Aceh Ulema Council (MPU) in the deeply conser- vative Aceh province of Indonesia, received 28 lashes in front of a crowd on Thursday after being caught having an affair
with a married woman. Like many Indonesians, Mukhlis goes by a single name.
His agency advises the local govern- ment on drafting and implement- ing religious
laws.
A video by the AFP news agency shows him grimacing as each strike is delivered onto his back by a masked officer on a stage, in front of a hand- ful of onlookers -- some of whom filmed on their cell phones. The woman with whom he was caught also received a series of lashes.
Aceh, the coun- try's only region to impose Sharia law, uses caning to punish a series of offenses, such as homosexuali- ty, drinking alco- hol and having sex outside of marriage.
"We have clari- fied his identity and we pro- ceeded with the investigation and handed over the dossier to prosecutors, and today we carried out the implementation of the flogging punishment," AFP reported Muhammad Hidayat, the Banda Aceh sharia police chief, as telling reporters at the caning.
"A lot of things we can learn, but ultimately we have to enforce God's laws, especially on Islamic land like here," Muhammad Ramdan, a Banda Aceh resident, added.
The state's
Sharia criminal code went into effect in September 2015, and a number of peo- ple have been caned under the laws.
Last year 15 people, includ- ing five
women, receive d the punish- ment for a vari- ety of crimes. Before that, two men were lashed 83 times for homosexual- ity.
"No matter who you are... if you violate (Islamic) law you will be whipped," Husaini Wahab, the deputy regent of the Aceh Besar municipality, told AFP after the latest caning.
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