[Kabar-indonesia] 2 of 3: Text of ICG Report: Islamic Law And Criminal Justice In Aceh

[Joyo at aol.com]

-2 of 3-

International Crisis Group
ISLAMIC LAW AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN ACEH
continues...

The Shari'a office bases its advice on three sources:
the texts of the Koran and hadith (traditions of the
Prophet); compilations of independent interpretations
(ijtihad) by scholars from the four major schools of
Islamic law; and an evaluation of public needs. It
then produces a new ijtihad. Al-Yasa' Abubakar, the
office head, explicitly rejects a salafi approach,
calling it an effort to turn the clock back to the
seventh century, and stresses the importance of making
Islamic teachings relevant to modern challenges.  The
worry of some Acehnese is that extension of Shari'a
has been taken on as an agenda by conservative
organisations more concerned with moral minutiae than
with important social issues. "Ask the conservatives
questions that reach beyond their favourite topics of
gambling, alcohol and headscarves, for example about
how their interpretation of religion can promote or
support the reconstruction of Aceh, or Aceh's
political and economic development, and they are
unable to answer".  

As with any local regulations, qanuns can be proposed
by the executive or legislative branches of the Aceh
government. The parliament sets up a drafting
committee, which seeks inputs from outside; in the
case of Shari'a drafts, the MPU's input is required.
As the draft is revised, the committee can hold
hearings or invite commentary through the media.
Women's organisations have been particularly active in
raising questions about proposed changes to the
khalwat qanun (see below), but in general, the
conservatives, who support more extensive Shari'a
application, are more vocal than those concerned about
its consequences.
 
IV. IMPLEMENTATION

Putting Shari'a into practice, especially when so many
new institutions and procedures had to be set up, was
never going to be problem-free, and Acehnese
authorities have done their best to introduce
correctives in response to obvious problems. But some
of the difficulties are inherent in the very concept
of a dual legal system, part Islamic, part secular, in
which no one is quite certain where the dividing line
lies.

A.  THE WILAYATUL HISBAH

The most problematic institution set up under Islamic
law has been the wilayatul hisbah (WH), the vice and
virtue patrol tasked with monitoring compliance with
Islamic law. 

Its members are highly unpopular; even those who
support broader application of Shari'a in Aceh
acknowledge that the WH are poorly recruited and
trained. Many police officers are wary of it gradually
encroaching on their role, with no clear vision of
what the ultimate division of labour will or should
be. (One politician suggested that if Shari'a is
properly applied, there will be no need for police.)
In Bireuen district in late 2005, the WH were handling
"minor" cases of gambling while the police took on
"major" ones, but the distinction was arbitrary.  The
provincial government is trying to improve standards
of recruitment but in requiring university-level
training in Islamic law, it may actually be skewing
the selection towards those with a more conservative
interpretation. And like the Shari'a office itself,
the natural inclination of the WH is to look for ways
to expand its authority.

1.  Background

In the first regulation on Shari'a adopted following
the 1999 law, the provincial government was mandated
to set up the WH as an institution to "control and
monitor" its implementation.  The law was very vague
about exactly how this body would function. Shari'a
offences would be investigated by civilian
investigators as well as by "others viewed as
appropriate to carry out these duties". It described
the duties of civilian investigators in a way that
suggested the WH would simply be part of the police,
with the ability to take direct action at the scene of
the crime, confiscate goods, take fingerprints, summon
witnesses and so forth. More details would be set
forth in a gubernatorial decree.

But as more discussions took place among officials,
academics and ulama, the idea of an institution
separate from the police took root. Those involved in
designing the Shari'a infrastructure appear to have
relied on several texts on Islamic jurisprudence which
describe different ways of maintaining order and
morality.  One is through cooperation of individuals
(mutatawwi'in) who voluntarily take on the task as a
religious duty or in the hope good deeds will be
rewarded in heaven. The second is through individuals
(muhtasibin) who have professional competence, receive
a salary and work in a formal institution. Acehnese
viewed the Saudi Arabian and Malaysian religious
police as possible models, understanding that any
local counterpart would have to be significantly
modified.  

In August 2001, the provincial parliament passed a
regulation setting up the Shari'a office with a
division for overseeing implementation and preventing
violations, though it made no mention of the WH per
se.  The milestone regulations were passed in 2002 and
2003: Qanun 11 on implementing Shari'a and the three
ventures into criminal codification. Qanun 11
authorises the WH to be set up at the provincial,
district, subdistrict, village, and neighbourhood
levels with the authority to monitor compliance, warn
offenders and, if they do not mend their ways, turn
them over to the police. Organisation of the WH,
however, is left (again) to a gubernatorial decree
after consultation with the Ulama Council, the MPU. 

The WH itself, however, did not come into existence
until after the long-awaited decree was issued by the
governor's office in January 2004. It stated that a WH
at each level of government was to be set up with a
head, deputy, secretary and muhtasibin to monitor
implementation and violations of Shari'a; provide
guidance and spiritual advice to suspected offenders
(after informing the family, police and/or village
head); advise and warn offenders; stop violations; and
warn those concerned about possible misuse of places
or facilities for actions that violate Shari'a.  The
WHs were given no police powers, however, only the
authority to stop or prevent offences, ask the
identity of perpetrators and turn over cases to the
police for further investigation.  They were put under
police supervision but the police were reluctant to
get too closely involved, so they eventually were
physically and administratively housed in the Shari'a
office.

The qualifications to become a WH member under the
2004 decree were general in the extreme: Indonesian
citizen; loyal to Shari'a, Pancasila and the
Indonesian constitution (in that order); qualified as
an imam to lead prayers; and of good character.
Candidates had to be "graduates" (lulusan) but it was
not specified of what or at what educational level.
The result was foreseeable: a haphazardly recruited,
poorly disciplined, poorly supervised force that
distinguished itself more by moral zeal than legal
competence - and that quickly became very unpopular.  

2.  The WH in Practice

A series of incidents illustrates the problem. 

-   In Sabang, on 30 September 2005, a mob attacked the
district Shari'a office and the WH members inside
after an overzealous WH harassed a girl who had just
come home from a night class and was standing in front
of her house at around 9 p.m. He grabbed her arm,
demanded to know what she was doing, implying she was
up to no good, took her photograph and was only
stopped when her outraged mother and neighbours came
to her rescue. The mob had to be calmed by the police,
and the WH district head apologised, saying it was a
new institution and "needed guidance".  

-   In January 2006, the WH, together with the police
and a man named Muzakkir Tulot, who seems to oversee
many such actions, raided beauty salons catering to
both men and women.  In one a long-time male customer
had gone to get his hair cut in a salon staffed by
women; in another, a transvestite was having his hair
styled by a woman; in a third, a man was cutting his
woman friend's hair. In yet another, three foreigners
who wanted haircuts were taken to the police station,
and the media was told 40 pills had been found in
their possession (they turned out to be anti-diarrhoea
medicine).  Under Regulation No. 11, mixed salons are
no longer permitted But an angry salon owner suggested
the WH was conducting raids just to show its authority
and was impugning the morals of staff and customers of
legitimate businesses. "I'm perfectly capable of
ensuring no hanky-panky goes on in my salon", he said.
 

- On 19 February 2006, in one of the most notorious
incidents, three women non-governmental organisation
(NGO) activists taking part in a UNDP workshop on
peace education at the Sultan Hotel in Banda Aceh were
seized without warning by a WH team for not wearing
headscarves while talking quietly in the hallway
outside their hotel rooms at about 11:30 pm. Some
twenty WH men and women grabbed them by the arms, took
them down the stairs "as though we were criminals" and
put them into a vehicle with six previously seized
women. They were taken to the mayor's office, where
they were told to sign statements admitting their
guilt. They refused to do so, but in the end had no
choice. They were also obliged to listen to a
45-minute lecture on the need to live according to
Shari'a principles. Other workshop participants went
to the police station and made a formal complaint
against the WH. The raid was overseen by Muzakkir
Tulot, who made coarse remarks to the women and their
fellow activists. 

Women complain that they are disproportionately the
targets of WH raids, with far more operations against
them for not wearing jilbabs than against men for not
attending Friday prayer. Moreover, there is no
tradition in Aceh of wearing the jilbab, and one does
not have to go too far off the main road in parts of
Aceh to find it nowhere in evidence. A woman said: "If
I don't wear the jilbab, that should be between me and
my God - not me and the WH". 

In their zeal to prevent khalwat, the WH recently
insisted that couples going to a rock music concert
separate on entrance to the concert grounds, with
young men on one side of a screen and young women on
the other. They also insisted that the singers, from
Jakarta, cover their heads. After 30,000 fans showed
up, the barriers broke down and the couples reunited. 

Widespread complaints against the WH led the
provincial Shari'a office to require more rigorous
qualifications for recruits: graduation from an
Islamic law faculty, a regular law faculty or at least
seven years of pesantren (Islamic boarding school)
education. Recruits also must be able to recite a
specified number of Koranic verses and write in Arabic
script, and as before, meet the qualifications to be
an imam.

Setting the bar somewhat higher for recruits will not
solve the problem, however, because there are two
innate difficulties with the WH that will not go away
with improved training. One is that the division of
labour between the WH, the police and the public order
office remains unclear. Provincial police whom Crisis
Group interviewed see the WH as encroaching on their
own role as law enforcers and do not want them to be
given additional powers. They are ambivalent about the
desirability of a separate enforcement agency for
Shari'a at all but at the same time are reluctant to
take on the task themselves. They already feel
overburdened and have enough trouble enforcing the
criminal code without taking on Shari'a ordinances.

WH officials, however, believe their authority should
be increased, and in all likelihood it will be. One
proposed revision is to give the WH, not the police,
authority to investigate violations of ta'zir
regulations. In the final version of the Aceh
government law that the Indonesian parliament passed
in mid-July 2006, responsibility for investigating
Shari'a violations rests with the police and civilian
investigators (penyidik pegawai negeri sipil). This
suggests the WH will be recognized as civil servants,
with a formal status as investigators similar to that
of customs agents.  The head of the Banda Aceh WH
would like to have full powers of arrest, search and
seizure as well.  The legal dualism resulting from the
WH's creation will not be comfortably resolved any
time soon.

The second problem is that the WH's existence
encourages citizens to report their friends and
neighbours for suspected breaches of moral behaviour.
Local newspapers carry ever more stories of the WH
finding an unmarried couple walking along the beach or
in a parked car thanks to "reports from the public."
Not only does this give a new status to the local
gossip, but it leads to a kind of religious
vigilantism, with conservative Muslim groups taking
enforcement into their own hands. On 4 June 2006, in
the district of Aceh Besar, for example, a group of
youths calling themselves the Anti-Vice Team (Tim
Anti-Maksiat, TAM) found a couple in a parked car
while patrolling at night on Lhoknga beach, not far
from Banda Aceh. They "arrested" them, took them to a
nearby mosque and called the WH. It was apparently the
third time that TAM had carried out an "arrest"; they
did it, they said, to show how serious they were about
upholding Shari'a.  

B.  PUNISHMENTS 

All three criminal regulations are punishable by
caning or fines. While many consider caning by
definition a human rights violation, it tends to be
viewed in Aceh as a punishment that is quickly over
with, avoids detention and is designed to cause more
shame than pain.  The interesting question is how it
came to be adopted as a punishment in Aceh and what it
suggests about how punishments for more serious crimes
will be determined as implementation of Shari'a
expands. 

At the outset, despite the 1999 law, the provincial
government was constrained by national legislation in
terms of the penalties it could impose. According to
the regional autonomy law, also passed in 1999,
violators of provincial or district regulations could
not be detained more than three months or fined more
than Rp.5,000,000 [then $630].  There was no scope for
applying penalties other than imprisonment or fines.
If Shari'a was to be applied fully, local scholars
argued, the restrictions in the autonomy law were an
obstacle. 

The 2001 special autonomy law gave more latitude to
the provincial parliament, and on 4 March 2003, the
Supreme Court in Jakarta ruled that the new Shari'a
courts in Aceh could adjudicate Shari'a violations,
based on local regulations and impose punishments. 

Once it was determined that the first three offences
to become the subject of Shari'a regulations would be
alcohol consumption, gambling and khalwat (illicit
relations), the task was to find the punishment to fit
the crime. Legislators left it to religious scholars
to comb books on fiqih (jurisprudence), for ideas.
There was no question of using standard criminal
penalties; if criminal offences were to be drawn from
fiqih, then so were punishments. 

Gambling and khalwat are ta'zir offences, that is by
definition ones for which the Koran and hadith specify
no specific punishment. This gave some latitude to the
legal drafters. But alcohol consumption is a hudud
offence, for which the Koran specifies 40 lashes, and
Acehnese scholars believed that if they were to apply
Islamic law correctly, there was no way around this.
The decision to apply Koranic punishments literally
was not a throwback to some putative historical
tradition of the Acehnese sultanate: its advocates
readily admitted that they had never been used in
Aceh.  To the extent there was creative thinking, it
was about how to make caning acceptable.

Before the laws were passed, a delegation of Shari'a
court judges and ulama took study tours to countries
where caning was practiced: Malaysia, Singapore,
Pakistan and Iran. A judge who went to the first three
said the aim was to find a method that was consistent
with Acehnese norms and values. They ruled out the
Pakistani practice of whipping the offender with a
rope as particularly painful. They found the Malaysian
and Singaporean practice "sadistic" because of the
size of the rattan and the force with which it was
used. 

Because the Acehnese drafters wanted to use caning
primarily for public humiliation, they inserted a
requirement that it be carried out in public at an
announced time and in a place where many people could
see; in practice, this has turned out to be after
Friday prayers at a prominent mosque. The rattan used
was deliberately specified to be smaller than that in
Malaysia and Singapore: a meter long but not more than
three-quarters to one centimetre in diameter. Men and
women both wear thin white clothing, and the lashes
strike the back between the shoulders and the waist.
The caner must keep his arm parallel to the ground;
his arm is not to be raised so that the armpit is
visible, and drawing blood is prohibited.

A doctor must be present both to certify that the
offender can withstand the punishment and to stop it
if it turns out he or she cannot. 

The person who inflicts the caning is drawn from the
WH and is usually from outside the immediate area of
the offence. To hide his identity as a safeguard
against revenge, the caner wears a hooded robe, orange
or lime green. A Muslim preacher or scholar first
gives a short sermon to the offender and the assembled
throng. The canings have become public spectacles,
with those arrested, especially when they are young
men caught for alcohol consumption or gambling, waving
to the crowd before and after and treating the process
as a test of strength and fitness rather than as a
public humiliation. Men are caned standing; women are
seated, and pregnant women can only be caned two
months after giving birth.

Once the hudud penalty of 40 lashes for alcohol
consumption was established, punishments for the
ta'zir offences were drawn up: between six and twelve
lashes for gamblers and a fine of Rp.35,000,000
($3,900) for establishments or individuals who allow
gambling to take place on their premises. The
punishment for a couple guilty of khalwat was set at
between three and nine lashes and/or a fine from
Rp.2.5 million to Rp.10 million ($275 to $1,100).
Those who knowingly provide facilities for offending
couples can be imprisoned for between two months and
six months or fined. Caning also has begun to be
applied to those who do not attend Friday prayers
(three lashes) in accordance with Qanun 11.

The laws went into force in 2005 after two years of
preparing and educating the public. The first caning
took place in Bireuen in August 2005; by December, 119
individuals from across the province had been
convicted, most for gambling.  From the start, the
canings have been controversial, not because of the
corporal punishment - if anything, that aspect has
been highly popular - but because those arrested have
been overwhelmingly "little people", men playing cards
for stakes of a few thousand rupiahs (less than $1).
Why, many asked, were police-protected gambling rings
not touched, let alone the big corruptors?

The answer from Acehnese officials was twofold. First,
the concept of applying Islamic law gradually was to
start with offences where people are usually caught
red-handed and that would be easy to prosecute, punish
and use as moral examples. The idea was to start with
little people and gradually work up.  More influential
people are gradually getting caught: Lhokseumawe
witnessed the first case of a member of a district
council caught for khalwat.

If more serious cases are prosecuted, the punishments
will have to be heavier, and simply increasing the
lashes will not work. "No one would want someone who
had embezzled billions to be given 100 lashes and then
sent home," said one official.  But once the subject
of serious crimes is broached, the problem of legal
dualism becomes more acute. Will the local parliament
be tasked with drafting new regulations and
determining new Islamic punishments for serious
offences? Are the Shari'a courts prepared to try cases
where complex evidence has to be presented? What if
the public demands the death penalty for corrupters?
What is the ultimate future of the Indonesian criminal
code, and perhaps more importantly, criminal procedure
code, in Aceh, if Shari'a is to be gradually extended?
 
V.  SHARI'A EXPANSION

The widening of Shari'a law has taken on a life of its
own for several reasons: a base of legislation is in
place from which to expand; a religious bureaucracy
exists with an interest in extending its own
authority; and so far, it is politically popular, at a
time when local officials are elected by direct vote. 

A.  UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF EXPANSION

Rather than move towards expanding the number of
offences covered by provincial regulations, Aceh's
legislators have decided first to revise and expand
the existing qanun on alcohol, gambling and khalwat.
The drafts make clear there will be more use of caning
and greater powers for the WH and also more crimes
associated with these three offences. The most
problematic is the inclusion of zina (adultery) and
rape in the expanded khalwat regulation.

1.  More caning 

The existing qanun mandates 40 lashes for anyone found
consuming alcohol but fines or imprisonment for
producing, selling, distributing or promoting it, or
assisting in the same. Fines or imprisonment are also
mandated for anyone who gives a permit to a hotel or
other establishment to serve liquor.

In February 2006, however, the Shari'a courts heard
the first appeal filed in a khamar case. It involved a
21-year-old villager found selling alcohol in Tamiang
in September 2005. He readily admitted his guilt and
was fined Rp.30 million (about $3,300).
 
Although it was near the low end of the range mandated
in the law (Rp.25 million to Rp.75 million), it was
still an enormous sum. He appealed on the basis that
he could not pay and asked to be caned instead. The
court ruled that the court of first instance had
correctly applied the penalty and rejected the appeal.


But perhaps because of the attention to this case, the
proposed revisions to the law now include caning as an
option for Muslim offenders. Any Muslim found
producing, selling or distributing liquor can be
sentenced to between twenty and 40 lashes, or fined
between Rp.20 and Rp.40 million, or sentenced to
between 40 and 80 months in prison. If the accused
cannot pay a fine, his or her possessions can be
seized, and if there are no goods to seize, caning or
imprisonment can be substituted. Non-
Muslims cannot be caned: they face a maximum of six
months imprisonment for the same offence or a fine of
between Rp.15 and Rp.30 million.  

The proposed revisions also distinguish between
Muslims and non-Muslims in terms of penalties for
providing facilities for alcohol-related offences.
Muslims can be sentenced to between ten and twenty
lashes, fined between Rp.10 million and Rp.20 million
or imprisoned for between twenty and 40 months.
Non-Muslims face a maximum imprisonment of six months
or the same fines. Similar distinctions run through
all the proposed revisions, raising serious questions
about the principle of equality under the law. 

The option of heavy sentences as an alternative to
caning for Muslims seems to steer the prosecutor, and
perhaps the accused, toward the latter. One argument,
in addition to shame for the offender and education
for the public, that Shari'a officials use to promote
caning is that it is much cheaper than locking up and
feeding someone over an extended period of time. (An
academic in Aceh questioned this proposition: the
expenses in holding a public caning may be one-off, he
said, but they are not inconsequential. The
construction of the platform, sometimes renting a tent
or canopy, payments to the cleric who gives the
sermon, payment to the WH member who carries out the
caning, security and other expenses can quickly mount
up.) 

2.  Greater powers for the WH

According to the original qanuns, after a WH member
has repeatedly warned an offender, he or she must
report the case to the police if it is to go any
further; investigations are then carried out by the
police, or in some cases by civil servants who have
been specially authorised to investigate Shari'a
offences. 

The proposed revisions would spell out the role of the
WH in greater detail, giving it far more authority to
investigate on the order of the police, and if an
offender is caught in the act, to arrest, search or
confiscate as needed. WH members who already have
civil servant status can go a step further and,
supervised by the police, take depositions, which are
then to be turned over to the public prosecutor's
office. They can also take fingerprints and
photographs, summon and investigate witnesses and
become in effect full substitutes for the police. 
Neither the police nor rights advocacy groups are
likely to be happy with the proposed changes. It will
be a test of strength for the religious bureaucracy to
get them adopted.

At the moment, there is no effective mechanism for
complaining against the WH, and no prospect of one in
the near future. 

3.  Revisions to the Khalwat regulation

The most far-reaching revisions have been proposed for
the khalwat regulation. The original qanun prohibiting
illicit relations was designed in part as a preventive
measure, to stop erring couples before they committed
the much more serious crime of zina (adultery), a
hudud offence that carries a penalty of death by
stoning.
The proposed revisions deal with khalwat and three
crimes not previously covered by Shari'a in Aceh:

-   ikhtilath, actions involving a male and female which
properly should take place only between husband and
wife, such as holding hands, kissing, hugging,
sleeping together or not covering the body properly in
front of the opposite sex;

-   zina, consensual sexual relations between a man and
a woman not his wife; 

and

-   rape, defined as a man's forcible sexual penetration
of a woman other than his wife. 

Punishments are heavier in the proposed revisions than
in the original law. For khalwat, caning, which is now
three to nine lashes, would be raised to five to ten
lashes and, again, be an option only for Muslims.
Ikhtilath would draw between ten and twenty lashes.
Minors caught in either act could not be caned (there
are no prohibitions against caning of minors in the
current regulations, although none has occurred).

Zina is a hudud crime, for which the Koran (Chapter
24:2) mandates 100 lashes. Traditional Islamic law
requires four adult eye-witnesses to the act, in the
absence of other proof. The revised qanun would
include a provision for such testimony, but a
confession of one of the accused would also be
acceptable. 

Anyone accused of khalwat or ikhtilath could claim he
or she was forced into the act, and if proven, the
penalties for the other accused would be doubled. The
standards of evidence are to be those set out in the
standard criminal procedure code and the determination
of the judge "in the spirit of protecting the
reputation and good name of a person as stated in
Islamic law". If the case is unproven, the accuser
would be caned, as a khalwat offender. 

A woman who confesses that she was forced to commit
zina could accuse the man of rape. The accusation
would have to be submitted to an investigator,
together with a full statement and preliminary
evidence to support her claim. If the claim is proven,
the rapist would receive twice the normal penalty for
zina, 200 lashes. The judge is to have discretion to
substitute a fine or imprisonment for all or part of
the caning. One lash is the equivalent of two months
in prison or a fine of Rp.1 million ($110).  If the
claim is not proven, the woman would become guilty of
a hudud crime - making a false accusation of rape -
and draw 80 lashes as a punishment. If the accusation
of rape is not proven but it is clear some form of
intimate relations took place, ikhtilath or zina, both
parties would receive the designated penalty. 

These proposed changes are highly disadvantageous to
rape victims - suggesting the woman is guilty of
illicit sex unless proven otherwise. 

B.  PROPOSALS FOR NEW QANUN

Al-Yasa' Abubakar, the head of the Shari'a office in
Banda Aceh, stresses that while the aim is to apply
Islamic law in full (kaffah), the process has to be
slow and deliberate. No one is rushing to push laws
through: no new Shari'a-based qanuns were passed in
2004 or 2005, and revisions to the existing qanun are
to take precedence over introduction of new ones. That
said, there is public pressure to apply Shari'a to
corruption, theft and murder, and his office is
working on "concepts" for extending it to these
crimes. Theft is a hudud crime, the specified
punishment for which is amputation of the hand.
Abubakar said that one could not apply Shari'a to
theft without including amputation as the penalty, but
that did not mean it would ever be applied. He doubted
that most Acehnese would support such a punishment. 

Murder is different, he said. The idea of blood
payments to victims has already been introduced by
former Vice Governor Azwar Abu Bakar as a form of
reconciliation after the conflict.  If families were
willing to accept payments from the perpetrator in
exchange for forgiveness, not only would
reconciliation be furthered, but the prison population
could be kept down. If the families refused payment,
the punishment would be death.  

In addition to codifying more crimes, other "concepts"
are on the table, such as a proposal to segregate boys
and girls in elementary and high school classes. "This
is not the Aceh I know", an Acehnese police official
concerned about the change said.  He and other
religious scholars acknowledge the inherent problems
of trying to apply Shari'a in stages. Ideally, they
say, all criminal law would be codified in a single
qanun, covering hudud, ta'zir and qishash-diyat
(murder and assault), with Islamic criminal procedure
codified in a second, but no one in Aceh has the
resources or time to do this.  

In the meantime, districts are going ahead and issuing
their own regulations that sometimes take the basic
laws on the books at the provincial level and go a
step further. In Bireuen, a district regulation
banning all private and public transport on state
roads during Friday prayers went into force in June
2006 and threatened to disrupt Medan-Aceh commerce. 
In Takengon, a regulation prohibits women from going
out after 10 p.m. without their muhrim (husband or
immediate male relative); if they do, they are liable
to prosecution under the khalwat qanun. 

-end/2 of 3... continues...

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