Banda Aceh – In Indonesia’s Aceh province, stories about young unmarried couples arrested by religious patrol officers make frequent headlines in local newspapers with tabloids exposing details of the offenders’ sexual trysts.

Staunchly Muslim Aceh has imposed some aspects of sharia, or Islamic law, since 2002 under an autonomy scheme granted by the central government as part of attempts to pacify a clamour there for independence.

A series of regulations, known as qanuns, criminalize consumption and sale of alcoholic beverages, gambling and illicit relations between men and women with caning the main punishment. Muslim women are required to wear headscarves.

A government agency called the Wilayatul Hisbah was set up in 2003 to monitor the implementation of the regulations, but seven years after Islamic law came into force, many Acehnese are critical of the way it is being implemented.

Some Acehnese said the Wilayatul Hisbah focuses too much on individual moral behaviour while others accused enforcers of ignoring offenses committed by the rich and powerful.

“The way they implement sharia is so silly,” said Aprilia, a woman who works for a government office in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh. “They only focused on arresting unmarried couples and don’t even bother gamblers anymore.”

“People with money can bribe their way out of trouble. For a few million rupiah, you can get away,” she said, referring to the Indonesian currency, 2 million of which is worth 175 dollars.

Another Acehnese criticized sharia patrol officers for what he called their preferential treatment.

“I support sharia, but it seems to me it is only being enforced on the poor,” said Wahdar, who sells mobile phone-reload vouchers.

“Rich people go to hotels and commit adultery, but they are never arrested,” said the man who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name. “Poor unmarried couples can only afford to go to the beach, and that’s where they get arrested.”

Critics said the anti-vice patrol by Wilayatul Hisbah officers encourage people to report on their neighbours and promote a kind of moral vigilantism.

In a front-page story on March 24, the Metro Aceh tabloid reported that a man was beaten up by villagers after he was allegedly caught having sex with his girlfriend at her house in the eastern town of Sigli. The villagers then handed him over to local officials, it said.

The head of provincial sharia affairs, Ziauddin Ahmad, defended the implementation of the laws, saying that in most cases, offenders were released after being given religious advice.

“Punishment is a last resort,” Ziauddin said. “Our main mission is to educate the people. We prioritize regulations that are urgently needed by the people and when the people are ready to implement them.”

He said the regular reports in newspapers on unmarried couples being arrested for being alone together indicated the public was concerned about the issue.

“In the past, such things happened but were not exposed to the public,” he said.

He said the requirement for Muslim women to cover themselves was meant to protect them.

“For example, an Australian model who was detained in Bali was constantly harassed by prison guards, but after she wore a headscarf, nobody disturbed her,” he said, referring to Michelle Leslie, a model who decided to wear a headscarf after being arrested on drug charges on the Indonesian resort island.

“When something is half open, you want to see it in full, but when it’s fully covered, you have no interest to know what is inside,” he said.

The Indonesian government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed a peace pact in 2005, ending decades of conflict that cost 15,000 lives.

The pact was spurred by the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed about 170,000 people in Aceh alone.

Aguswandi, a British-educated human rights activist who leads the Aceh People’s Party, one of six local political parties contesting Thursday’s legislative elections, said Islamic regulations focusing on morality were not what Aceh needed.

“It has become a distraction when we should be dealing with challenges such as maintaining the peace, tackling the economy and establishing good governance,” Aguswandi said.

Aguswandi said the dominant voice of what he called supporters of “Islamic conservatism” was cause for concern and that many Acehnese are critical of the aspects of sharia that are being implemented.

“Whether women should wear headscarves is not a major issue,” he said. “It’s not the business of the state to regulate on such individual matters. We’re all victims of this distracting process.”

Aguswandi said not all Islamic scholars agreed with the aspects of sharia in force in Aceh, but it was too sensitive to be a campaign issue for political parties contesting seats in the provincial and district councils.

“We could be accused of being anti-Islamic” for expressing opposition to sharia, he said. (dpa)