A woman in Indonesia's Aceh province became the first person publicly caned for alleged obscenity on social media after she and a man were caught kissing during a TikTok livestream, authorities there confirmed Thursday. She fainted during the punishment.
The caning, carried out July 2 in Banda Aceh by a masked Sharia police officer, marks a new frontier for the province's Islamic criminal code, extending corporal punishment into the digital sphere for the first time. The woman kneeled, was struck across the back, screamed, and collapsed to the ground clutching her body before losing consciousness. A medic examined her on the scene.
Muhammad Rizal, the city's Sharia police chief, told reporters it was the first time anyone in the religiously conservative province had been punished for violating Sharia law through social media. His explanation was blunt: "They clearly violated the Islamic sharia."
Aceh is the only province in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, that enforces Sharia law. The code was introduced in 2002, with further provisions added in 2003. Among the rules: acts of physical intimacy such as kissing, hugging, or touching between men and women who are not married to each other are forbidden. So is being alone with someone of the opposite sex who is neither a spouse nor a relative.
Nationally, caning is not a legal form of punishment in Indonesia. But it retains strong public support in Aceh, as the Daily Mail reported, and authorities there have continued to expand its use.
The woman's male partner was also caned. Four other convicts received lashes the same day. Another couple was given 27 lashes each for physical intimacy. Two men were caned 29 and eight times, respectively, for gambling.
How many lashes the woman had received before she fainted remains unclear. The reporting contains conflicting figures, 21 lashes and 27 lashes are both cited in different passages, and no official reconciliation of the discrepancy has surfaced. Any remaining lashes, authorities said, would be postponed only until she is deemed medically fit to complete the punishment.
Thursday's caning was not an isolated event. Aceh has carried out a steady drumbeat of public corporal punishment in recent months, with women repeatedly collapsing during the process.
In June, a woman fainted after she and her partner each received 100 lashes for having sex outside marriage. She had to be carried away. In May, authorities flogged two men and two women 100 times for the same offense, with five others also caned for violations including proximity to the opposite sex and alcohol consumption.
In January, a woman collapsed after she and her partner received a combined 140 lashes for drinking alcohol and having sex outside marriage. She was escorted to an ambulance. Last year, two men were each given 76 lashes after a Sharia court found them guilty of having sex.
The harshest penalties under Aceh's code are reserved for child rape, up to 200 strokes of the cane, a prison term of up to 200 months, or a fine equivalent to two kilograms of gold.
In 2018, the province went further, consulting the public on whether to introduce beheading as a punishment. Indonesia's central government warned that such a measure would not be permitted under national law.
Amnesty International Indonesia responded swiftly. Spokesman Haeril Halim, in a statement to AFP, framed the punishment as an expansion of state power into online expression:
"This shows that the Aceh Islamic Criminal Code (Qanun Jinayat) has expanded its reach to target peaceful expressions in the digital sphere with the caning of the young couple."
Halim called the caning "a horrifying act of discrimination" and said corporal punishment "has no place in a just and humane society."
Amnesty International's broader organization went further in a formal statement, declaring that caning "contravenes Indonesia's constitution and is in clear violation of international human rights law and standards." The group cited the UN Convention against Torture, to which Indonesia is a signatory, stating that the punishment "constitutes a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment and can amount to torture." Human Rights Watch has also repeatedly condemned the practice.
What sets this case apart from the province's long record of public floggings is the trigger. The couple did not commit their alleged offense in a physical public space. They kissed during a TikTok livestream. Someone who saw the stream reported them to Aceh's Sharia police, the Wilayatul Hisbah, who investigated and brought the case forward.
That means the enforcement apparatus in Aceh now treats a social media broadcast as equivalent to a public act of intimacy. The code's reach, in practical terms, has extended from the streets of Banda Aceh into the phones and screens of anyone livestreaming from the province.
Indonesia officially recognizes six religions as well as indigenous beliefs. But Aceh operates under a distinct legal framework that permits punishments the rest of the country does not allow. The tension between Aceh's Sharia code and Indonesia's national constitution has been a point of friction for years, friction that international rights organizations have tried, with limited success, to force into the open.
When Texas passed its heartbeat abortion law in 2021, celebrities and progressive commentators raced to compare the state's elected legislators to the Taliban. As Breitbart reported, Cher tweeted that she was "Wondering When Texas Senate Will Start Mandating Burqa's," while Michael Moore, Amy Schumer, and Alyssa Milano dubbed Texas lawmakers the "Texas Taliban." Cher's own followers accused her of Islamophobic rhetoric, and she responded by insisting she was "NOT ISLAMOPHOIC."
The comparison was absurd then. It is even more revealing now. In Aceh, a woman was beaten unconscious in public for kissing a man on a livestream. No Hollywood celebrity has launched a hashtag. No late-night host has drawn the comparison. No campus protest has materialized.
The same voices that equated a democratically enacted state law with theocratic tyranny have remarkably little to say when actual theocratic tyranny leaves a woman collapsed on the ground, awaiting the remainder of her lashes once a medic clears her to endure more.
Several basic facts about this case remain unresolved. The woman and her partner have not been publicly named. It is unclear whether the woman was deemed fit to continue the caning after the medic's examination, or whether the remaining lashes have yet to be administered. The exact number of lashes she received before fainting has not been confirmed. The specific venue in Banda Aceh where the punishment took place has not been identified in available reporting.
What is clear is the direction of travel. Aceh's Sharia police have now established a precedent: a social media broadcast can trigger the same corporal punishment as a physical act witnessed in the street. The digital sphere, in the eyes of the Wilayatul Hisbah, is simply another public square, and the cane applies there, too.
The woman on the ground in Banda Aceh is not an abstraction. She is a real person, struck until she lost consciousness, for an act that in most of the world would not merit a second glance. The people who claim to stand for women's rights might consider standing for her, if they can find the courage to name the system that put her there.
