Sharia police have caned a couple 140 times each in Indonesia’s Aceh province for having sex outside marriage and drinking alcohol, likely one of the severest such punishments since the deeply conservative region adopted Islamic law.
Sexual relations between an unmarried couple are strictly outlawed in Aceh, the only place in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, to impose sharia law.
Indonesia has a reputation for being a “moderate” Muslim nation, but the wind in the Islamic world as a whole is blowing in the opposite direction, as a group of Christians has just discovered.
Morning Star News, which tracks the persecution of Christians worldwide, reported Tuesday that “as police looked on, Muslims in West Java Province, Indonesia on Dec. 14 formed a human wall to block Christians from attending a Christmas service, according to local media.”
Carney says all Canadians "must come together" around the values of Eid:
"These are Muslim values. These are Canadian values." pic.twitter.com/1WMk1iBcUX
— Western Standard (@WSOnlineNews) June 6, 2025
The Carney government is celebrating a new trade deal with Indonesia, but labour voices are sounding the alarm over a weakening of worker protections compared to recent deals that Canada has inked.
In a press release, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s (Nepean, Ont.) office described the Canada-Indonesia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement as “game changing,” noting that it is the first bilateral agreement with a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Finalizing the deal was a pillar of Canada’s Indo-Pacific strategy, and part of a growing effort to diversify the country’s trading markets.
Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has signed new agreements on trade and defence cooperation with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Parliament Hill.
The trade deal is comprehensive, meaning it opens up trade in multiple industries with the world’s fourth most populous country.
Carney said the “game-changing” agreement is the first-ever bilateral trade pact signed with a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
At his upmarket Bali spas, Roger Paulus Silalahi has been overseeing renovations, ready to pamper tourists with herbal massages and milk baths as they return to the Indonesian holiday island after a crippling pandemic lockdown.
But last week the entrepreneur’s optimism was jolted after parliament approved a sweeping new criminal code featuring tough curbs on personal freedoms — including a ban on sex outside marriage, with a punishment of up to one year in jail.
The laws will apply to everyone — Indonesian citizens, foreign residents and tourists — in the world’s third-largest democracy and most populous Muslim nation.
MPs expected to pass new criminal code that will also make insulting the president a crime
Indonesia’s parliament is expected to pass a new criminal code this month that would criminalise sex outside marriage and outlaw insults against the president or state institutions, prompting alarm from human rights campaigners.
The deputy justice minister, Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej, said in an interview with Reuters that the new criminal code was expected to be passed on 15 December. “We’re proud to have a criminal code that’s in line with Indonesian values,” he said.
Canada and Indonesia share a long-standing partnership of over 65 years. Since 2000, Canada has provided over $1 billion in official development assistance (ODA) to Indonesia with an average of $44 million (all channels combined) per year over the past 5 years. Bilateral funding to Indonesia in the fiscal year 2021 to 2022 was approximately $13.5 million.
h/t DM
At least 174 were killed, many of them trampled to death, at a football match in Indonesia as riots triggered a stampede in one of the deadliest sports events in the world.
Riots broke out after the game ended Saturday evening with host Arema FC of East Java’s Malang city losing to Persebaya of Surabaya 3-2.
Disappointed after their team’s loss, thousands of supporters of Arema, known as “Aremania,” reacted by throwing bottles and other objects at players and football officials. Fans flooded the Kanjuruhan Stadium pitch in protest and demanded that Arema management explain why, after 23 years of undefeated home games, this match ended in a loss, witnesses said.
NEW – Over 100 people were killed tonight in riots that broke out at a football match in Indonesia.pic.twitter.com/hGZEwQyHmL
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 1, 2022
The death toll is still being revised up and down.
More than 120 football fans have reportedly died after chaos and violence erupted following an Indonesian league football match. Supporters of the Javanese clubs Arema and Persebaya Surabaya clashed after Arema were defeated 3-2 at the match in Malang Regency, East Java.
The head of the Malang Regency health office, Wiyanto Wijoyo, said more than 120 people had died. Officials were still collating the numbers of injured victims, he added.
🔴INDONESIA :#VIDEO MASSACRE (!) AT KANJURUHAN STADIUM!
127 people died, more than 180 injured, after a riot broke out at a football match between Arema & Persebaya at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang.#BreakingNews #UltimaHora #Kanjuruhan #Malang #Masacre pic.twitter.com/TVJjgTB4pW
— loveworld (@LoveWorld_Peopl) October 1, 2022
When Kevin Paltridge’s son Corey was killed in the 2002 Bali bombings, the devastated father turned to other Australians whose children had died suddenly to try to cope with his own loss.
He quit his job as an airline supervisor and went to work at a funeral home, where he worked until his retirement a decade ago.
“I wanted to meet people who had lost kids,” he says.
Declassified documents reveal how in 1965 a shadowy dirty tricks arm of the Foreign Office incited anti-communist massacres that left hundreds of thousands dead
In early 1965 Ed Wynne, an official from the Foreign Office in London in his late 40s, arrived at the door of a two-storey villa set in the discreet calm of a genteel housing estate in colonial Singapore.
But Wynne was no ordinary official. A specialist from the Foreign Office’s cold war propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), he had been assigned to lead a small team. A junior official, four local people and two “IRD ladies”, seconded to the unit from London, would join him.
The arrival of Wynne and his colleagues in the Winchester Road cul-de-sac marked the beginning of what would later be claimed, by those who led it, as one of the most successful propaganda operations in postwar British history. A top secret operation that helped overthrow the leader of the fourth most populous country in the world and contributed to the mass murder of more than half a million of its citizens.
This is the horrific moment a woman passes out in pain after receiving 100 lashes for having pre-marital sex under a Sharia law punishment handed out in Indonesia.
Footage shows the Indonesian woman collapsing after being flogged in public for having sex before marriage.
The woman, whose name was not disclosed, and her male lover each received 100 lashes in the city of Lhokseumawe on Monday.
In 2017-2018, Canada delivered $50.5M to improve sustainable economic prosperity for the poor and to support Indonesia’s democratic-governance reform agenda.
MAKASSAR, Indonesia (AP) — Two attackers blew themselves up outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral during a Palm Sunday Mass on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, wounding at least 20 people, police said.
A video obtained by The Associated Press showed body parts scattered near a burning motorbike at the gates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Cathedral in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi province.
Jakarta, Indonesia – Indonesia’s national motto is unity in diversity, but Wiwin’s experiences in school have made her question how that maxim plays out in real life.
The 21-year-old lives in West Java. Her family is part of a religious minority called Sunda Wiwitan, who venerate nature and ancestral worship.
She said she faced relentless pressure in high school to wear a “jilbab”, a loose garment worn by some Muslim women, which covers the head, neck and chest.
She told Al Jazeera she often cried after school.
“They [a group of seven teachers] questioned me in the headmaster’s office, asking, what is your religion … who is your God … where is your holy book?” Wiwin recounted.
But but but… Indonesia bans forced religious attire in schools
Two Christian men were publicly flogged today in Indonesia’s ultra-conservative Aceh province for drinking alcohol and gambling, in a rare case of non-Muslims facing a punishment frequently condemned by rights groups.
The two accused received 40 lashes each from a masked sharia officer who beat their backs with a stick.
One of them, identified only as JF, said he chose flogging to avoid a criminal prosecution that could have seen him jailed up to six months.
A teenager who was lashed nearly 150 times collapsed during his punishment for raping a child in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province, where public caning is a common penalty for violating Islamic law.
The 19-year-old grimaced and cried out as a masked sharia officer on Thursday whipped his back with a rattan stick in the town of Idi Rayeuk in East Aceh.
Seems mild punishment.
