The VICE Guide to Extreme Punishment


After getting grounded by our moms a bunch of times for doing basically nothing (oh, I’m two hours past curfew and now I can’t leave the house for a whole week – that’s really fair – NICE!) we decided to look into what other people get punished for. We broke it down continent by continent and the research was harsh.

Antarctica and Australia are no big whoop because they are punishments and Europe’s not so bad (they just have wars when they want to get rid of people), but the rest of the world sucks.

South America treats everyone like human garbage unless they can afford otherwise. In Africa you’re dead no matter what you do and in Asia, well, Asia’s two parts. In Oriental Asia all the punishments are about embarrassing you, so you’re going to get publicly flogged even if you stay a thousand miles from Singapore. In the Asia they call the Middle East, everyone wants to cut your limbs off. Jew, Muslim, bread-stealer or kissing-bandit, you are basically going to have your hands removed no matter what you do.

Even this continent sucks. You’re safe here if you’re white and rich and you don’t do drugs, but everyone from a slightly bad neighborhood gets sent to jail for life.

Being grounded is still totally gay bullshit, but it’s not sooo bad. At least she hasn’t trained the dog to rape us. Yeah, that’s right, raping dogs — NICE!

BEING A WOMAN
AFRICA

Nigeria
Women are not allowed to ride the bus. If a woman takes any other mode of transportation the person driving will receive twenty lashes. In Kanwuri, Gusau, for example, you will often hear about guys getting lashes for giving their girlfriends a lift. Oh yeah, they lose their vehicle and their license too.

ASIA
Afghanistan
As mentioned in the VICE Guide To Evil (V7N6), women who leave the house are shot by Taliban (the ruling hardcore Islamic party) guards, just like that.

BEING THE WRONG RELIGION
ASIA
Israel
In Israel, being Palestinian can get you thrown in jail and tortured for an indefinite amount of time while the Shabak (the Israeli Security Force) try to figure out if you have any PLO info. One such torture, called the “coffin,” involves lying in a tiny box on the floor with no opening but a hole for breathing and a hole for shitting. Being released from torture and sent to regular jail isn’t much better. Prison guards now have trained dogs that will rape prisoners on demand. NICE!

Saudi Arabia
Apostasy (turning your back on Islam) is punishable by death. They behead you right after Friday prayers in a public viewing area called a “chop square.” You will also end up there if you smuggle drugs or dabble in black magic.

United Arab Emirates
In the UAE, no woman is allowed to marry a non-Muslim unless he converts to Islam. The offense is punishable by imprisonment and, if the marriage was consummated, flogging.

BURNING SOMEONE WITH ACID
ASIA
Saudi Arabia
If you throw acid on someone’s face and they lose an eye you have to have your eye surgically removed. Like, an eye for an eye.

CORRUPTION
AFRICA
Egypt
Anyone caught taking or offering a bribe is sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor and forced to pay a fine of no less than 1,000 Egyptian pounds and no more than the amount of the bribe.

ASIA
China
In Maoist theory, everybody should be treated equally. Anybody found guilty of corruption is killed instantly.

Other countries that view corruption as a capital offence include Vietnam and Indonesia.

DOG FIGHTING
EUROPE

Former Yugoslavia
Nothing

NORTH AMERICA
America
Organizing a dog fight is a felony with a $5,000 price tag and up to five years in prison. Attending one can cost you $1,000 or a year in jail.

DRESSING SLUTTY
ASIA

Israel
In Mea Sharim, the Hassidic Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, a woman who wears something a little too saucy is tied to a post and hit with rocks until she dies.



DRUG RELATED CRIMES
AFRICA

Nigeria
Impurities are frowned upon in Zamfara, a state in northern Nigeria that abides by Shariah, the strict Islamic law. Anybody found guilty of permitting impurities to enter their body by imbibing an intoxicating substance (basically anything from beer to heroin) is to be whipped publicly 80 times.

Iran is another country where people get whipped for taking drugs.

ASIA
Malaysia
The Malaysian government does not take drug trafficking lightly. Under Malaysia’s Dangerous Drug Act of 1952, anyone with so much as one pot plant in their house is to be sentenced to life in prison and six lashes from the rotan, a bamboo stick made especially for court-ordered punishments.

Anyone found in possession of at least 15 grams of heroin, 1,000 grams of opium, 30 grams of morphine or cocaine, or 500 grams of cannabis is presumed to be a drug smuggler, and is killed.

The death penalty is also applied to drug traffickers – although not necessarily for the same quantities – in Brunei, Cuba, Kuwait, Indonesia, Iran, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.

NORTH AMERICA
America
With the “three strikes you’re out” rule, all the mules and runners are getting life sentences for nothing. If a friend is out getting blow and you throw in $20 for some of it, your friend just used up one of his strikes. Pot is rarely considered a felony but if you are remotely associated with anything harder three times, you are in jail for life.

84% of American college students try drugs at least once but 58.1% of American prisoners are in jail for doing the same thing. NICE!

LIVING WIT’ YOUR MOMS
AFRICA

Uganda
In Uganda, it is illegal to share a house with your parents after you are married. If you do, you are taken to the leaders of the Igoria Iukoto clan to be cleansed and disciplined. They usually destroy your house, cane the whole family and fine you something like one black ram and one black cock (the bird, you pervert).

MURDER
NORTH AMERICA
America
Being associated with murder is a felony. That means (though cases vary from state to state) you are looking at the death penalty. Which means if you are driving the getaway car for a bank robbery where someone gets killed by a gun accidentally going off, you are going to end up in the electric chair.

Murder also leads to execution in places like Armenia, Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, Benin, Belize, Belarus, Barbados, Bangladesh, Bahrain, the Bahamas, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bolivia, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Brunei, Darussalam, Chad, Chile, Central African Republic, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Djibouti, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Guatemala, Guinea, India, Israel, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Morocco, Myanmar, North Korea, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, St Christopher and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Singapore, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Syria, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago, Thailand, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

SEXUAL OFFENSES
ASIA

Afghanistan
All gayness is punishable by death. The execution is carried out in one of two ways: the offenders are either thrown off a high roof or hill, or buried beside a wall which is then toppled onto them by a bulldozer. These methods were dreamt up by a guy named Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban.

Other countries where sodomy is punishable by death include Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan (in extreme cases), Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

China
Though the law is hundreds of years out of date and you never hear about it in the big cities, there are still rural towns that hit you with bamboo for being bad. Any sex outside of marriage means 90 blows with the stick. Attempted rape gets you 100 blows and then you have to leave town. More traditional places like Xi’an simply have the state executioner strangle rapists to death.

The scariest part about China, though, is that police officers have the right to just ship people off to “re-education through labor” without a trial. “Re-education” means you get sent to a desolate labor camp for up to four years. According to Chinese sources, over 100,000 people are sent to be re-educated every year.

Iran
If you put your dink in a bum you are put to death. Rubbing one’s penis between the thighs of another male without penetration (“frottage”) is punishable by 100 lashes. If the offender isn’t Muslim both guys die.

Iraq
Throughout the Middle East, Islamic law states anyone found raping a woman other than their wife is to be stoned to death. They just smoke you up for hours until you get so high you die… just kidding, they throw rocks at you. Same goes for someone who cheats on their wife. If you are having sex before marriage and you’re not cheating on anyone you just get a public flogging.

Death by stones also goes down in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

Philippines
Execution via poisonous injection is the punishment for rape in this Jesus-loving land.

Saudi Arabia
Any kind of deviant behavior (like dressing in drag, for example) is going to get you about 2,600 lashes and a minimum of five years in prison. The flogging is usually broken up, like 52 lashes per session for 50 sessions with a pause of fifteen days between each time.

Other countries where they whip homosexuals include Malaysia, Pakistan and Sudan.

Sri Lanka
Fornicators (people who fornicate but aren’t married) are flogged all over Asia. The number of lashes depends on how much of a fornicator you are.

Same goes for Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

AFRICA
Nigeria
As with most African countries (especially Sudan), raping a woman leads to public stoning. According to Shariah law, anyone who has sex before marriage is to be whipped 100 times in front of his partner. Then she gets flogged too.

EUROPE
Chechnya
Homosexuals get caned.

NORTH AMERICA
America
In America, male pedophiles are punished for having dirty thoughts with electrical shocks to the dink. They show the bad man movies of young boys and every time he gets a hard-on they electrocute his penis.

Some states, like Arkansas, have allowed prisoners to reduce their sentences if they have their balls rubbed out. Chemical castration reduces a child molester’s sentence from thirty years down to twenty.

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SOUTH AMERICA
Columbia
Colombian Indians have their own brand of punishment for cheating. Tribal governor Ermes Taqninaf and his mistress, Rubiela Yetacue, both received seventeen lashes with a knotted leather whip for having an extra-marital affair. Elders of the native Paez tribe took turns flogging both wrongdoers. “As a Paez Indian, I’m proud to have received this punishment because it is glorifying my race,” said Taqninaf. In 1998, Paez Indians dumped senator Jesus Pinacue into a freezing mountain lake after he defied a community order and publicly backed a candidate in a presidential vote.



THEFT
AFRICA

Kenya
Like in most parts of Africa, it is perfectly normal to be killed for stealing. Even if it’s just a hat. On the other side of the continent, in Equatorial Guinea, it is not unusual for prisoners to be locked up for a month inside a 6′ by 4′ cupboard (completely naked, of course) and deprived of food. In the evenings, they let you out to be hanged from a pole and beaten.

Same goes for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

ASIA
Afghanistan
The Qu’ran states you should only chop off someone’s hands as a last resort in totally extreme cases, like when grounding or extra house chores aren’t working. Modern fundamentalists have interpreted this to mean “cut off their hands if they steal a thing.” You can take a large commission off an arms deal, but put a button in your pocket and you’re screwed. As with female circumcision, surgeons do the chopping, so the incisions are perfect.

In case that’s not enough of a deterrent, they let the limbs rot outside the public stadium where the operation is performed. If you get caught a second time you get your feet or ears cut off. Third time they pick up your torso and put it in jail. Fifth time they pound your flesh into mush and feed it to dogs that have AIDS. Sixth time they steal your energy from the cosmos and convert the ions to a negative charge (which kills). Seventh time they go “Whoa, this guy is good.”

Same goes for Iran and Saudi Arabia, though in Saudi they often just kill you.

Iraq
This is one of the few Middle Eastern countries where branding is common as a theft deterrent. They put a big X on your forehead and it looks weird.

Sri Lanka
Here thieves receive a public flogging when caught. The number of lashes varies depending on the severity of the crime and whether or not anybody was harmed in the course of the theft.

NORTH AMERICA
America
As we said before, “three strikes you’re out” rule means if you are caught committing three felonies you are looking at life in jail. The problem is that a felony is basically any crime that involves violence. If you steal a woman’s purse and run, that’s larceny. If you try to steal a woman’s purse and there is a tugging match and you shove her then the crime becomes a felony. Do three crimes like that and you are in jail for life. If you grew up in a tough neighborhood where being a tough asshole is the only way to survive you are basically looking at life in jail. Shove someone off their bike and take off on it three times and you’re “out.”

Ronnie Villa, a grandfather of four, is doing twenty-five to life for stealing five bottles of Head and Shoulders shampoo. His prior strikes occurred twelve years earlier.

TREASON
ASIA

Afghanistan
Anyone involved in sabotage is hanged. Then the corpse is paraded around the city for the rest of the day suspended from a gigantic crane.

AFRICA
Liberia
Anyone who doesn’t like the government is killed.

Other countries that execute traitors are Indonesia, Iran, Afghanistan, Ghana, Sudan, the Philippines, Singapore, Turkey, Vietnam and the Democratic Republic of Congo

VANDALISM
ASIA

Singapore
We all know about how graffiti artists get caned in public but Singapore has all kinds of other creative punishments for damaging public property. Pissing in an elevator will land you in jail for several days. It’s easy to catch the guy; there are moisture sensors in the elevator that can tell when you are going pee. When they are set off the elevator locks and the police are notified. You can finish going pee because it will take them a while to get there but then you’re fucked.

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