A 42-year-old man was publicly whipped in Malaysia’s Terengganu state after being found guilty of “close proximity”, sparking condemnation from human rights groups and renewed scrutiny of the country’s religious courts.
He received six lashes with a cane at the Masjid Al-Muktafi Billah Shah mosque in state capital Kuala Terengganu following Friday prayers, marking the first public punishment of its kind in modern-day Malaysia.
The man, identified as construction worker Mohd Affendi Awang, pleaded guilty to being alone with a woman in her 30s who was neither his wife nor a close relative, an offence under the state’s sharia rules.
The encounter occurred between 1:10am and 2:15am on January 25.
According to local media who witnessed it, the whipping lasted two minutes. Police restricted the crowd to 70 people and banned any recordings.
Terengganu is governed by Islamist party Pas, whose dominance in the region has led to stiffer application of Islamic laws in recent years. In 2018, the same state caned two women in a courtroom after they pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual acts in a parked car.
