WARNING: Graphic content

THE young man is hunched down in the corner on the floor — naked, his knees attempting to cover his manhood. He’s covering his face, while being filmed, appearing to plead for mercy.

Another young man, wearing just shorts, is pushed into the same corner.

“Brother, please help, please help, please help us,” the man being filmed says.

As he pleads, he is slapped, kicked and insulted.

“Brother we got busted having sex. Brother please don’t report me.”

One of the captors replied: “You are a man, why do you look like this?”

Footage has emerged of the moment a group of men, described as “vigilantes”, raid a boarding house in Indonesia who laugh as they assault the two men and called them “dogs”.

The couple, aged 21 and 23, were filmed on March 28 in the province of Banda Aceh as the men detained the pair for breaching the country’s strict religious laws. They were reported to police the next day.

The footage, circulated online, shows the gang raid the house and find the couple in bed.

The gang who raided the home were neighbours of the couple who had become suspicious, a spokesman for Aceh’s sharia police Marzuki Ali told the ABC.

“The case has been sent to the sharia court of Aceh... It involves sodomy which can be punished by 100 lashes,” he told Reuters.

According to the Bangkok Post, the neighbours had spotted them being intimate with each other regularly and had “set out to catch them” having sex.

Sharia police later arrested the men who admitted being in a relationship and having had sex three times, said the spokesman.

“Obviously it’s not easy to catch a couple involved in a sexual act … This is the first case ever in Aceh,” Andreas Harsono, from the group Human Rights Watch, told the ABC.

In 2007, a gay couple in the same province were caught in a similar, brutal way, according to Amnesty International.

On 22 January 2007 two gay men were reportedly beaten, kicked and verbally abused by neighbours and then were arbitrarily detained by the police.

“Tomy and his partner were then forced to go outside where they were confronted with a group of 10-15 people who kicked and beat them, using homophobic language such as: ‘You outsiders slander us; you soil our place with your filthy tricks!’

“Tomy became the focus of their assault because he tried to protect his partner.

“The sarong that his partner was wearing was used to tie them together and they were then made to squat on the ground, while their attackers deliberated on what to do next.

“Tomy claims that around six or seven police officers beat him in the stomach, legs and feet. “The police also allegedly forced him and his partner to strip naked and perform oral sex and other sex acts in front of them. At one point, a police officer allegedly pushed his rifle against Tomy’s anus.

“Tomy and his partner were then taken outside into a courtyard and were made to squat on the ground in their underwear. Police officers sprayed them with cold water from a hosepipe for around 15 minutes. When his partner asked for permission to go to the toilet, a police officer allegedly forced him to urinate on Tomy’s head.”

Aceh is the only province in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country which implements sharia law. People caught gambling and drinking alcohol have for some years been punished with public canings.

Under a local law that came into force in 2015, people can also be punished for having gay sex with up to 100 strokes of the cane. The recently arrested men — whose identities have not been released — will be the first to be caned for breaking the regulation if the punishment goes ahead.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia but the country’s Consitutional Court is considering to recriminalise sex outside of marriage and gay sex.

But it’s not just homosexuals who face Indonesia’s growing religious conservative movement; last year an incredible 339 people were whipped in Aceh for crimes ranging from gambling to drinking.

Last year a 20-year-old woman was publicly caned for standing too close to her boyfriend. Accused of breaking Islamic sharia law, which forbids couples to become intimate, she was the 14th person to be flogged in her province.

The arrests in the western province sparked outrage among rights activists, with Human Rights Watch demanding the men’s release and warning that they face “public torture for the ‘crime’ of their alleged sexual orientation”.

“The arrest and detention of these two men underscores the abuse embedded in Aceh’s discriminatory, anti-LGBT ordinances,” said Phelim Kine, the group’s deputy Asia director.

Gay sex is not illegal in the rest of Indonesia, which mainly follows a criminal code inherited from former colonial ruler the Netherlands.

However there was a backlash against the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community last year with government ministers publicly making anti-gay statements.

Aceh, on Sumatra island, began implementing sharia law after being granted special autonomy in 2001, an attempt by the central government to quell a long-running separatist insurgency.

Islamic laws have been strengthened since the province struck a peace deal with Jakarta in 2005.

— Additional reporting by AFP