Women being punished for tsunami

Sharia judges in Indonesia are targeting women.

A year after the disaster which many see as a divine punishment, emboldened Islamic hardliners are doing their best to eradicate sin — and women are their prime targets.

With reconstruction slow, irrational fears of a second tsunami high, and nearly 500,000 still homeless along 500 miles of coastline, the stern message falls on fertile ground. A Sharia police force modelled on Saudi moral enforcers enthusiastically seeks out female wrong doers for public humiliation.

The Wilayatul Hisbah, which loosely translates as “Control Team”, has arrested women, lopped off their hair, and paraded them in tears through the streets while broadcasting their sins over a megaphone.

More than 100 gamblers and drinkers — men and women — have been caned in public and some clerics are calling for thieves’ hands to be amputated.