Woman publicly caned 100 times over adultery is hospitalised in Indonesia

A woman charged with adultery under sharia law has been admitted to a hospital in Indonesia's Banda Aceh province after she received 100 lashes as a punishment.

The 30-year-old woman was caned in public after being charged with being in a room with a man she was not married to. The 34-year-old man she was with also received 100 lashes, but did not require hospitalisation, ABC Online reported.

Similar punishments have been handed down to men and women in the Muslim-majority Aceh, the only province in Indonesia to have implemented sharia law in full since it was granted special autonomy in 2001.

In May, two men were publicly caned nearly 90 times each after being caught having gay sex. Although homosexuality is not illegal in several parts of Indonesia, it is in Aceh.

Last October, a woman was caned in front of a cheering crowd. She was one of 13 people – seven men and six women aged between 21 and 30 – who were punished for violating laws that ban public displays of intimacy among unwed couples.

"Caning is a cruel and inhuman form of punishment that could amount to torture," Amnesty International's Indonesia Researcher, Papang Hidayat, told IBTimes UK.

"It violates international law and does not belong on the legal books in any context. The fact that it is used in Aceh to punish same sex relations or adultery - neither of which should be considered a crime - makes its use all the more abhorrent," he continued.

"Indonesia must immediately repeal all laws that impose caning as a punishment and do much more to create a safe space for LGBTI [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersexed] people."

In 2015, a district in Aceh invoked a bylaw requiring separate school facilities for boys and girls, while another city in the region barred female passengers from riding a motorcycle with a male driver.

In 2014, the government in Aceh approved a law obliging every citizen to follow the sharia Islamic legal code regardless of their religion. Councillor Abdulah Saleh said at the time that the new behaviour law, or qanun jinayat, "does indeed oblige everyone in Aceh to follow sharia without exception."

He added that non-Muslim violators of Indonesia's national ciminal code (KUHP) would be given the option to choose between a sharia court or a regular court - but both courts would adhere to Islamic legislation.