Dog-collar necklaces and chains also were taken from the youths before they were thrown in pools of water for “spiritual” cleansing, local police chief Iskandar Hasan said Wednesday.
After replacing their “disgusting” clothes, he handed each a toothbrush and barked “use it.”
The crackdown marked the latest effort by authorities to promote strict moral values in Aceh, the only province in this nation of 240 million to have imposed Islamic laws.
Here, adultery is punishable by stoning to death. Homosexuals have been thrown in jail or lashed in public with rattan canes. Women are forced to wear headscarves and no tight pants.
It’s not clear why police decided to hone in on punks.
Though pierced and tattooed teens have complained for months about harassment, Saturday’s roundup at a concert attended by more than 100 people was by far the biggest and most dramatic bust yet.
Baton-wielding police scattered fans, many of whom had traveled from other parts of the sprawling archipelagic nation to attend the show.
Hasan said 59 young men and five women were loaded into vans and brought to a police detention center 30 miles (60 kilometers) from the provincial capital, Banda Aceh.
They would spend 10 days getting rehabilitation, training in military-style discipline and religious classes, including Qur’an recitation, he said. Afterward, they’ll be sent home.
Twenty-year-old punker Fauzan was mortified.
“Why? Why my hair?!” he said, pointing to his cleanly shaven head. “We didn’t hurt anyone. This is how we’ve chosen to express ourselves. Why are they treating us like criminals?”
The women, some in tears, were given short, blunt bobs.
Hasan insisted he’d done nothing wrong.
“We’re not torturing anyone,” the police chief said. “We’re not violating human rights. We’re just trying to put them back on the right moral path.”
However, Nur Kholis, a national human commissioner, deplored the detentions, saying police have to explain what kinds of criminal laws have been broken.
“Otherwise, they violated people’s right of gathering and expression,” Kholis said, promising to investigate.
Aceh — where Islam first arrived in Indonesia from Saudi Arabia centuries ago — enjoys semiautonomy from the central government.
