Indonesian Islamic police force lesbians to break up
A 17-year-old girl is caned by a sharia police at a mosque compound in the staunchly Muslim Aceh province where Islamic sharia laws have been adopted. She received eight lashes each after being caught having an extramarital kiss with a 24-year-old man.
Joining the ranks of dudes playing cards and teenagers making out is a lesbian couple in Aceh, Indonesia.
They're the latest to run afoul of the region's hardline Islamic religious police, who threaten canings and worse against gamblers, unmarried canoodlers, gays and all who violate Quranic law.
Two lesbian women, aged 26 and 18, were forced to stop living together and move to villages 22 miles apart. They'd even gotten married by convincing a village chief that the older partner was male, according to AFP, but that's been annulled.
Now the relationship is over and the morality police are keeping the couple under surveillance.
Their punishment could have been much worse.
The local police chief told AFP that "we told them that they must be beheaded and burned and their ashes must be thrown away to the sea. We are actually allowed by our religion to kill them."
Aceh's provincial parliament has even voted to enforce stoning against homosexuals, but the governor has yet to sign the law, according to the BBC.
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