Malaysia Islamic court postpones caning of women for lesbian sex

A Malaysian Islamic court postponed the caning on Tuesday of two women convicted of lesbian sex as activists hoped it would give them time to stop the punishment being carried out. The women, aged 22 and 32, were arrested in April by Islamic enforcement officers after they were found in a car in a public square in northern Terengganu state, one of the most conservative areas of the Muslim-majority country.

They were brought before an Islamic court and admitted to breaking a sharia law that forbids sexual relations between women and sentenced to six strokes of the cane each and fined 3,300 ringgit.

The sentence was to be carried out Tuesday but Terengganu Sharia Court chief registrar Wan Abdul Malik Wan Sidek told AFP it had been moved to September 3 for “technical reasons”.

He did not give details but The Star newspaper quoted another court official as saying that since a few agencies would be involved in carrying out the sentence, technical issues needed to be resolved first. Both women are out on bail. Members of Malaysia’s LGBT community have been facing rising pressure in the largely Islamic country, with public officials frequently accused of targeting them.