Indonesia: Woman and man brutally caned in public for "affectionate contact"

[davidn3600]

A woman who was accused of being too friendly with a man she is not married to, as well as the man himself, were caned at a mosque in Indonesia's Aceh province on Monday.

According to the Jakarta Post, the caning took place before a yelling crowd at Baiturrahim Mosque in Banda Aceh after the couple was sentenced according to the city's Sharia bylaws, which criminalize "khalwat (affectionate contact by an unmarried couple)."

"Take these punishments as a lesson. What has been done by these convicts should not be taken as an example. And, I hope their canings in Meuraxa district today will be the last ever," Deputy Mayor Zainal Arifin told the crowd, according to the Post. "And to the public, I ask that you do not isolate those who have been convicted here today. And also, those who have been convicted are reminded not to repeat the same mistakes."

The man Nur Elita was with, fellow university student Wahyudi Saputra, was also caned, as were four men accused of gambling.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/woman-man-brutally-caned-public-175839648.html

[Coventina]

1. So much for "liberal" Indonesia!

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. The liberal part is that the man was caned too n/t

[Octafish]

2. Indonesia, 1957-1958: War and pornography

by William Blum

“I think it’s time we held Sukarno’s feet to the fire,” said Frank Wisner, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans (covert operations), one day in autumn 1956. Wisner was speaking of the man who had led Indonesia since its struggle for independence from the Dutch following the war. A few months earlier, in May, Sukarno had made an impassioned speech before the US Congress asking for more understanding of the problems and needs of developing nations like his own.

The ensuing American campaign to unseat the flamboyant leader of the fifth most populous nation in the world was to run the gamut from large-scale military maneuvers to seedy sexual intrigue.

The previous year, Sukarno had organized the Bandung Conference as an answer to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created political-military alliance of area states to “contain communism”. In the Indonesian city of Bandung, the doctrine of neutralism had been proclaimed as the faith of the underdeveloped world. To the men of the CIA station in Indonesia the conference was heresy, so much so that their thoughts turned toward assassination as a means of sabotaging it.

In 1975, the Senate committee which was investigating the CIA heard testimony that Agency officers stationed in an East Asian country had suggested that an East Asian leader be assassinated “to disrupt an impending Communist [sic] Conference in 1955”. (In all likelihood, the leader referred to was either Sukarno or Chou En-lai of China.) But, said the committee, cooler heads prevailed at CIA headquarters in Washington and the suggestion was firmly rejected.

CONTINUED...

http://williamblum.org/chapters/killing-hope/indonesia

Things really changed in 1964.