Young Indonesian couple publicly caned after kissing on TikTok

Unmarried man and woman whipped 21 times each because they had violated province’s version of Islamic law A young couple in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province have been publicly caned after a Sharia court convicted them of violating Islamic law by kissing during a TikTok livestream. The court ordered the couple, a 22-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, to be whipped with a rattan cane 21 times each for kissing without being married. At least 100 people witnessed the caning, carried out by a group of people wearing robes and hoods on a stage in Bustanussalatin City Park in Banda Aceh. The couple were arrested in April after a livestream from 27 February, in which they kissed in a car in Banda Aceh, went viral and prompted reports to local sharia authorities. Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia that enforces a version of Islamic law. The country’s secular central government granted the province the right to implement religious law in 2006 as part of a peace deal to end a separatist war. In 2015, Aceh expanded the law to apply to non-Muslims, who account for about 1% of the province’s population. The law allows up to 100 lashes for morality offences including