Maldivian teen to face 100 lashes for sex

Sep 04, 2012 |

Colombo

Tags:

Maldivian court has ordered 100 lashes and eight months' house arrest for a 16-year-old girl convicted of having sex with an older man, a report said on Monday.

She "confessed" to having sex with the 29-year-old after her family pressed charges. The man was found guilty of having sex with a minor and sentenced on Sunday to 10 years in jail, the private Minivan News reported.

The pair were found having intercourse in the Raa atoll, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of the capital island Male, the report said, adding that the girl would be flogged when she reaches adulthood.

"As she is legally a minor, the court stated that the girl's sentence would be implemented when she turned 18," Minivan News said. It was not immediately clear when the couple had sex.

The court ruling came 10 months after UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay urged the Maldives to stop publicly flogging women for having extra-marital sex.

Pillay noted during a visit to the country that the Maldives had progressed in safeguarding the rights of its 330,000 Sunni Muslims, but more needed to be done to protect women.

Flogging is normally handed down as a punishment by village chiefs who also act as local judges. A cane is used.

The Maldives, better known as a luxury tourist destination, adopted multi-party democracy in 2008, but faced political unrest leading to the resignation of the first elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, in February.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/186206" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-cb0347b2a134a9d6712d4f77900105f9" value="form-cb0347b2a134a9d6712d4f77900105f9" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80683633" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>