Two men were publicly flogged in Indonesia’s conservative Aceh province on Thursday after they were found guilty of homosexual relations by a court operating under strict Islamic law.

New Telegraph gathered that while gay sex is not illegal elsewhere in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, it is outlawed in Aceh, which imposes a version of sharia, the Islamic legal code.

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The flogging began before midday at a park in provincial capital Banda Aceh, with one man accused of instigating the relationship lashed 82 times and the second man 77 times.

Both were caned with a rattan stick as dozens watched. Meanwhile, the two men’s sentences were reduced by three lashes and they were to spend three months in detention.

Caning retains strong support among Aceh’s population as a common punishment for a range of offences that include gambling, drinking alcohol and adultery.

The region started using religious law after it was granted special autonomy in 2001, an attempt by the central government to quell a long-running separatist insurgency.