Two gay men are brutally whipped 76 times each in public over same-sex relationship (photos)

Two gay men were brutally whipped in public over their same-sex relations in Aceh, Indonesia.

The lovers were flogged 76 times each in the conservative province after they were found guilty of sexual relations by a court operating under strict Islamic law.

The men were part of a group of 10 who were flogged on Tuesday at a park in the provincial capital for a range of alleged crimes.

The pair were flogged separately with a rattan stick as a small crowd watched, according to an AFP journalist present.

Their initial sentences of 80 lashes each were reduced by four for four months spent in detention.

In April, local sharia police found the two men together at a public toilet in the same park where they were later flogged, said Roslina A. Djalil, head of Banda Aceh sharia police’s law enforcement.

‘A member of the public saw suspicious people and reported it,’ Roslina said.

Amnesty International condemned the punishment.

In a statement, its regional research director, Montse Ferrer, said: ‘This public flogging of two young men under Aceh’s Islamic Criminal Code for consensual s£x is a disturbing act of state-sanctioned discrimination and cruelty. 

G@y s£x is outlawed in Aceh, which imposes a version of sharia, the Islamic legal code, but it is not illegal elsewhere in the world’s most populous Muslim majority country.