Two men were publicly flogged 76 times each in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province on Tuesday after being convicted of engaging in same-sex relations under the region’s strict Islamic law.

Aceh is the only province in the country that enforces sharia, the Islamic legal code, where gay sex is criminalised. Elsewhere in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, such acts are not illegal.

According to AFP, the two men were among 10 people punished in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital, for a variety of offences. They were flogged separately with a rattan stick before a small crowd.

Initially handed 80 lashes each, their sentences were reduced by four to account for four months already spent in detention.

Authorities said the men were caught in April when local sharia police found them together at a public toilet in the same park where they were later flogged.

“A member of the public saw suspicious people and reported it,” explained Roslina A. Djalil, head of Banda Aceh sharia police’s law enforcement.

Rights group Amnesty International condemned the punishment, saying it amounted to a violation of human rights.

“The criminalisation of same-sex conduct… has no place in a just and humane society,” Amnesty’s regional research director Montse Ferrer said in a statement.

In addition to the two men, three women and five men were also flogged on Tuesday after being convicted of sex outside marriage, being in close proximity to members of the opposite sex, and online gambling.

Caning continues to enjoy widespread support in Aceh, where it is used for offences such as drinking alcohol and adultery.

The region formally adopted religious law in 2001 after Jakarta granted it special autonomy as part of efforts to end a long-running separatist conflict. (Nigerian Tribune)