A woman receives flogging by a woman flogger in Banda Aceh in November, 2022.
A woman accused is escorted by the Sharia police to the flogging arena in Banda Aceh. She's provided a white overcoat and a mask to hide her identity.
The idea of inducting a woman flogger, according to Muhammad Rizal, the head of Aceh’s Sharia police, is to tackle the problem of rising crime among women. A female flogger is better placed to punish a woman because a male flogger’s delivery is “too harsh,” he added. “The purpose of flogging is not to torture the person, but to make them feel guilty,” Rizal told VICE World News. “That’s why, if the perpetrator is a woman, then the flogger should be a woman too.”The Sharia police go to great lengths to conceal the identities of women floggers from the public. Rizal said that is so that they don’t face retaliation or other forms of revenge later on. “I myself don’t know the real identities of the women floggers,” he said. The optics of inducting women floggers is a matter of pride for the Sharia police in a country where restrictions on women often make it to international headlines. In the past, they’ve taken international media on patrols to demonstrate how they maintain a strict moral conduct on the streets, especially for women.Public floggings are business as usual in Aceh, a uniquely conservative province. What’s uncommon, though, is flogging delivered by a woman.
Sharia policewomen speak to a young couple caught sitting too close to each other in beach. Over the years, hundreds of Sharia-based ordinances have come to dominate public life, including those that restrict intermingling of the opposite sexes. Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images
She is aware that she holds a special position in a male-dominated field, but doesn’t know whether it’ll inspire other women to follow suit. “Maybe the bigger lesson for them is to watch the flogging and not do anything that’s forbidden,” she said. Reha, another flogger who also joined in 2018, said that women floggers have “really helped” maintain law and order. “Back then, there were many women perpetrators [of Sharia crimes],” she said. “So women floggers had to be inducted to handle [this crime].”“Since I’m human, I used to shake out of nervousness at first. But honestly, there’s no fear because I consider it a duty to God.”
The identity of women floggers is never revealed to the public for the fear of revenge or other forms of retaliation, especially by those they flogged.
Roslina A Djalil, the head of Sharia law enforcement (second from left), sits next to Muhammad Rizal, the head of Aceh’s Sharia police (center), among other Sharia officials at a public caning in Banda Aceh.
A 2018 flogging in Aceh shows a woman in pain while receiving the punishment for allegedly providing sexual service. Floggings of women have especially attracted international attention. Photo: Maskur Has/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“If the investigation doesn’t turn up enough evidence, the person is free,” he said. “If not, then we arrest and the court decides the punishment.”When asked for data, the Sharia police station in Banda Aceh said it didn’t have records of the number of floggings they had conducted in recent years. But one human rights report shows 428 floggings in 2013, followed by 515 in 2014 and 548 in 2015 across Aceh. In 2019, the Aceh police released a budget report that showed that each flogging costs the provincial government nearly $1,000 (IDR 15 million), which includes food arrangements, and facilitating security, health officers and witnesses. Aceh is one of Indonesia’s poorest provinces, and this kind of spending has irked local activists.Hundreds of Sharia-based ordinances dominate Aceh’s public life— from clothing restrictions and to banning women to sit astride motorcycles to intermingling of opposite sexes.
The Sharia police spends nearly $1,000 per flogging, an expensive affair in a province that's one of the poorest in the country.
Activists say public floggings impact women disproportionately in a society that instils shame and stigma against them.
Women participate at a women’s rights protest in Banda Aceh in 2019. Many activists on the ground say unnecessary focus on Sharia’s restrictions is pulling critical focus away on their struggles, which is to address sexual violence in the province. Photo: Chaideer Mahyuddin/ AFP
The global outrage around flogging, Husna added, is a distraction from the critical shortcomings of Qanun Jinayat, which they are fighting. For instance, it doesn’t recognize sexual violence apart from rape and sexual harassment. The Sharia punishments also overrides Indonesia’s historic sexual violence law that was passed this year. That law expands the definition of sexual violence to include abuse such as forced contraception, non-physical abuse and sexual slavery, and enforced harsher imprisonments for those charged.“Sexual violence is rising and flogging doesn’t change that. The government should revise the Sharia regulations.”
A man gets flogged in Banda Aceh in November. Activists say flogging is an ineffective tool to combat actual crimes.
