Religious police crack down in Aceh

An Aceh Sharia policewoman, center, records names of women who were arrested in Banda Aceh last month for not using veils. PHOTO: AFP

Indonesian teenager Purnama Sari shivers when she recalls how Aceh's religious police ejected her and her girlfriends from their tents in a pre-dawn raid earlier this year.

The teenagers were on a weekend camping retreat in the rugged hills of the Indonesian province at the northwestern tip of Sumatra -- and boys of their age were also there, staying in separate sleeping quarters.

"They were hitting the tents and screaming `Get out, get out!'" says the 18-year-old Islamic boarding school student, who wears a demure long skirt, long-sleeved blouse and a pastel-colored headscarf, or jilbab.

The men lectured the dozen girls on the risk of committing the sin of khalwat -- being illicitly close to a man -- before lining them up for identification at the nearest village.

The boys were discreetly taken away from prying eyes.

"We felt like prostitutes," Purnama says. "Villagers were watching us, laughing. All of us girls were crying."

Purnama, who says her initial admiration for the police is now gone, is a rare voice willing to criticize the implementation of Shariah, or religious law, in Aceh, with few others complaining here for fear of being seen as bad Muslims.

The pace of acceptance of Shariah has accelerated across the province while many Indonesians elsewhere, who largely practise a more moderate version of the faith, follow developments carefully, some with alarm.

Even the UN's World Food Program (WFP) has been targeted. The religious police -- known as Wilayatul Hisbah (WH), taking their name from Iran's Vice and Virtue Patrol -- snuck into their compound last month.

"There was nothing to find and they found nothing," says WFP spokesman Charlie Higgins of the incident, which highlighted the lack of clarity surrounding just how non-Muslims are affected by Shariah.

Referred to as the "verandah of Mecca," Aceh has for centuries been a staunchly Muslim heartland, with rebels fighting for independence from Jakarta for three decades before ending last year.

The province however only began building a framework for Shariah law in 1999 and the Shariah police were tasked with monitoring compliance in 2004.

Islamic courts were given approval to extend their reach to criminal justice in 2001 when a special autonomy law was passed by Jakarta.

People in Aceh refuse to speak out against Shariah, rights activist Aguswandi says, because they "are scared of being accused of being anti-Islam, of being targeted and also because there is no support for a different voice in Aceh."

"There is no debate yet on Shariah," he says.