How tourism can soften hard-line Aceh

At the end of 2011, after hearing that police in Aceh province in northwestern Sumatra — Indonesia’s most religiously conservative region — had arrested local punk rockers and shaved their heads to “reeducate” them, I vowed I would never visit.

Aceh’s curbing of the loud Western music genre, in keeping with its hard-line compliance with Shariah (Islamic law), made global headlines, infuriating the underground music community, of which I am a part. It also gave the province unhelpful publicity in the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, which wreaked havoc along its coast. Of the estimated 230,000 people who died in that disaster across South and Southeast Asia, 170,000 perished in Banda Aceh, the province’s capital, and the surrounding area.