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The college students were seen entering a park restroom together and now must endure public lashings in the only Indonesian province under fundamentalist religious law.
Indonesia will can two men for kissing and embracing one another in public.
A religious court in the Aceh province sentenced the two college students to be caned in public 80 times each, according to the Associated Press.
The punishment, handed down by Judge Rokhmadi M. Hum, came after people reported seeing the 20- and 21-year-old men enter a public restroom together at Taman Sari city park and reported the matter to police.
The men, whose names were not publicly disclosed by the court, were only seen hugging and kissing, but the court found they had committed acts that lead to gay sex, which is forbidden under Indonesian law.
The Aceh province implemented sharia law in 2014. The legal system is based on strict and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam. The court's other rulings have included public caning for certain sins like adultery or, for women, wearing clothes that fit too tightly. A court ordered the caning of men accused of gay sex for the first time in 2017, and has ordered several others to face similar punishment since.
This marks the fifth time in Aceh province that individuals were sentenced to caning specifically for homosexual crimes
Prosecutors in the most recent case actually sought a more severe sentence of 85 lashings, but the court ruled 80 would suffice based on the defendants’ records as good students with no prior convictions. Both men will also have one lash reduced for each month they spent in jail after their arrest, which means they will each only be caned 76 times.
Aceh remains the only part of Indonesia under sharia law and allowed to enforce it even among non-Muslims.
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