Constitutional rights don’t hold much water with the Islamic police in Indonesia’s Aceh province.  The province’s religious police force have forcibly separated a lesbian couple and warned the two women they could be beheaded under Islamic law.  Homsexuality is legal in the rest of Indonesia.

The two women – Ranto, 26, and Nuraini, 18 – have been moved to separate villages nearly 40km apart, and the religious police force, unique to Aceh province, is “monitoring them closely”.

“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,” Southwest Aceh district religious police chief Muddatsir said, explaining the beliefs particular to the province. “It’s disgraceful what they’ve done.”

Meanwhile, liberal critics continue to argue that Aceh’s controversial sharia law fosters intolerance and is in direct breach of the country’s constitution.

[Source: IOL]