Unmarried Couple Caned in Indonesia

Six couples were publicly whipped in Indonesia s conservative Aceh province Monday, Mar. 4, for relations outside marriage. The twelve people whipped were arrested late last year during a raid on a hotel in the province s capital Banda Aceh. Rights groups have slammed public caning as cruel, and Indonesia s President Joko Widodo has called for it to end. But the practice has wide support among Aceh s mostly Muslim population around 98 percent of its five million residents practice Islam. Aceh adopted rel