The local government has received full mandate under the Constitution of 1945 to govern itself in accordance with autonomy prinicple and assistance duty.By the autonomy, the local government has the right, authority,and obligation to maintain its government specificallyini certain sectors, i.e. education, health, public work, spatial planning, public housing, settlement area, public order, and social issues.Aside to the prevailing autonomy in all territories, certain area has special autonomy to regulate and manage the local communities’ interests based on their own initiatives. One of the examples of special autonomy is Aceh Province, pursuant to Law Number 44 of 1999 on Special Autonomy of Aceh Special Region in conjunction with Law Number 11 of 2006 on Aceh Government.
Aceh has the autonomy to conduct religious life based on Islamic Sharia in worship, ahwal al-syakshiyah (family law), muamalah (civil law), jinayat (criminal law), qadha’ (judiciary), tarbiyah (education), proselytizing, syiar (sharing the greatness of Islam), and the defense of islam. The entire conduct of religious life is regulated under the Aceh Qanun.One of the qanuns that acquired many controversies on legality and its implementation is Qanun Aceh No. 6 of 2014 on Jinayat(criminal) Law (Qanun Jinayat). Qanun Jinayat regulates the forbidden act by Islamic sharia (jarimah)and the application of law (‘uqubat) for the perpetrator. One of the types of penalty is flogging.
The application of flogging punishment has triggered critisism because it is against the human rights principles. The special rapporteur for Torture, Manfred Nowak, stated that the flogging penalty applied in Aceh is a violation of state obligation to prevent corporal punishment. Amnesty Internationalhas stated that flogging penalty is a backward movement for human rights enforcement in Indonesia.The Network of Concerned Civil Society for Sharia (Jaringan Masyarakat Sipil Peduli Syariah, JMSPS) also boldly refuses the application of flogging penalty in Aceh because of its inhumanity. The appeal on Qanun Jinayat to the Supreme Court had also been appealed by the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR), which categorized flogging penalty as torture, cruel inhumane punishment and it degraded human dignity. Whilst the criminal system in Indonesia has strictly banned flogging punishment.The Supreme Court rejected the appeal because Law Number 12 of 2011 on the Establishment of Legislation that has become the legal basis for the material test of the objection petition is being processed for its testing in the Constitution Court.
Upon the flogging punishment, the Legal Aid (LBH Masyarakat) stands in the same position with the critics of flogging punishment. Legal aid states that flogging punishment is perpertuating corporal punishment that is obsolete for the direction of modern punishment. Based on this belief, we performed monitoring and media documentation during 2016 to now further about the human rights violations of flogging punishment in the life of Aceh society.
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