T

he local police on the outskirts of the capital deserve praise following the latest incident of mob vigilantism, this time against a young unmarried couple accused of having sex. Police in Tangerang arrested six men this week, including two neighborhood chiefs, for egging on the intimidation, beating, stripping and parading of the victims. Perpetrators who spread the incident online will also face legal consequences.

Even if the couple had engaged in mesum, today’s shorthand for “sexual indecency,” Tangerang police chief Sr. Adj. Comr. Sabilul Alif said no one had any right to abuse them, adding that they had not. This is a rare sentiment today, which should be trumpeted by our leaders of morality.

Nevertheless the damage had been done, with the young woman screaming for mercy as the assaulters forcefully stripped her, paraded the couple and took selfies, filming their act and posting it online. The sickness spread instantly, as usual, across cyberspace, with even some mainstream media uploading the video, a prize-find in the frantic 24-hour search for “click bait.”

After the furor over the latest display of perverted cruelty dies down, the young man and woman will be left to figure how to face their future — as in earlier cases of public shaming. The zealousness to become moral police is alive and well among us, although official moral police and punishments such as public caning are only justified under sharia bylaws in Aceh province.

No wonder reports continue to surface of people taking the law into their own hands, the latest fatality being a man suspected of stealing a mosque megaphone, who was beaten and burned to death in Bekasi.

The fact that police are often outnumbered by mobs doesn’t explain such aggression.

Researchers cite the National Violence Monitoring System, which between 2005 and 2014 recorded 33,627 victims of vigilante violence in 16 provinces, including 1,659 fatalities.

In the same period, “communal riots and political clashes resulted in 10,433 victims, including 637 fatalities. Although large-scale violence tends to grab more national headlines, the cumulative impact of vigilantism is three times higher,” wrote Sana Jaffrey in the New Mandala online periodical of Australian National University.

Of the sharp increase in violence by mobs reaching 25 percent in the above period, Jaffrey wrote in the January edition, “Most remarkable, however, is the increased targeting of social and ideological ‘offenses’” in mob violence. “These violations include fornication, adultery, homosexual relationships and the sale of food during the fasting month.”

As such offenses are regulated in the Criminal Code, Blasphemy Law and Pornography Law, among others, vigilantes claim to be “helping” police in law enforcement, often getting light sentences. The result: a horrifying “democracy” with the freedom to lynch, as long as leaders and law enforcers only deliver a slap on the wrist on the most immoral “moral police.”

We need more police acting firmly like officer Sabilul — although police arrived too late — and more leaders reminding people to safeguard their own morality.