In the dim and distant days (well, up to 1948 anyway) when the British judicial system allowed for young men to be birched for minor criminal behaviour, we know that the normal practice was for the lads, once sentenced by the court, to be taken either to a room in the court building or to a spcially prepared cell in the local polic station. There they would have to either lie down on a bench or bend over the end of a table, be stripped naked below the waist, and the birch would have been applied vigorously to their bare bottom.
The scene being enacted here, I believe in an Eastern European nation, and probably meant to be with a small and remote village community. Okay, so they've taken things further than the British model - first of all, the subject is evidently a female (the Brits stopped judicial whipping of females in 1820), and she's completely naked rather than just from the waist down. Clearly from the marks, she has already received several strokes with a switch or birch, although it's not clear whether the punishment was concluded at this point. Reports of judicial birchings in Great Britain suggest that it was quite normal for the skin to be broken, but her marks look relatively undamaged. At least the marks do look like they were genuinely caused and not just faked for the image, and coming from a production in that part of the world, I would expect nothing less. She's also being publicly humiliated - we don't see here what sort of audience was present, but the purpose is evidently to shame as well as cause pain.
