THE TELEGRAPH: Muslim model Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno has become the first woman in Malaysia to be sentenced to a caning after being caught drinking beer in a beach resort.
The 32-year-old will receive six lashes at a woman's prison next week in what is being viewed as an example of the growing influence of Islamic hardliners on the country.
The mother-of-two who lives in Singapore with her husband, paid a fine of £860, but declined to lodge an appeal so she could get the punishment over with and put the episode behind her.
The harsh sentence has provoked anger among women's rights groups who fear it is another sign of the creeping influence of conservative Islam on Malaysian society.
In the northern backwater state of Kalentan ruled by the hardline Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, authorities have decreed that supermarkets must have separate checkout queues for men and women and beaches be segregated.
Young couples caught sitting too close together on park benches in the state capital, Kota Baru, are hunted down by the city's moral enforcers and fined up to £285 in Sharia courts.
The Islamic alcohol prohibition laws in Malaysia's eastern Pahang state date back more than two decades. But Malaysian-born Kartika, who now has Singaporean citizenship, is the first woman to fall foul of them.
She was arrested in July last year in a hotel nightclub in the beach resort of Cherating during a raid by the state's religious department and admitted drinking beer.
An Islamic court fined her and ordered her to be caned at Kajang women's prison next week, but spared her a jail term of up to three years.
She received word of the sentence from her father and said she would be returning to Malaysia from Singapore.
"I accept the punishment," she said. "I am not afraid because I was ready to be punished from day one. [The authorities] hope to use my case as a way to educate Muslims. So go ahead. I want to move on with my life." >>> Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok | Wednesday, August 19, 2009
