The men, aged 20 and 23, were allegedly having sex in a house in Aceh on March 28 when a group of vigilante enforcers entered the dwelling and filmed them.
The public caning took place on Tuesday outside a mosque in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. Hundreds of people turned up to watch the punishments being meted out to the two men and other Indonesians convicted of different offences.
The men were sentenced to 85 lashes each last week. According to Human Rights Watch, they received 83 lashes on Tuesday, with two subtracted for the two months they spent in detention.
Aceh has a special legal status allowing it to insert Sharia bylaws into the criminal code. In the province, ordinances criminalising drinking alcohol, sex outside of marriage and gay sex can be enforced against Muslims and non-Muslims.
Andreas Harsono, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, told BuzzFeed News: “Today is a historical day, not only in Aceh, but also in Indonesia. This is the first time that gay sex is being punished with caning, to be precise – with torture, in public. It’s the first time in the modern history of South East Asia to have caning for gay sex.”
