Actor and humanitarian George Clooney is calling for a boycott of hotels owned by the Sultan of the Asian country of Brunei — a week ahead of the day that the small country will start killing gay people by stoning.
Clooney posted an impassioned open letter on Deadline Thursday, asking consumers not to do business with the 9 hotels owned by the autocratic country’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, including the famed Beverly Hills Hotel, as well as the Hotel Bel-Air.
Brunei isn’t a significant country. Its population is less than 500,000 people, pretty small in relation to most of its neighbors, The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia. But Brunei has oil. This year it was ranked as the 5th richest nation by Forbes. Good for them. Of course they haven’t had an election since 1962 and have adopted the most extreme version of Sharia law so, not so good for them. At the head of it all is the Sultan of Brunei who is one of the richest men in the world. The Big Kahuna. He owns the Brunei Investment Agency and they in turn own some pretty spectacular hotels.
A couple of years ago two of those hotels in Los Angeles, The Bel-Air and The Beverly Hills Hotel were boycotted by many of us for Brunei’s treatment of the gay community. It was effective to a point. We cancelled a big fundraiser for the Motion Picture Retirement Home that we’d hosted at the Beverly Hills Hotel for years. Lots of individuals and companies did the same. But like all good intentions when the white heat of outrage moves on to the hundred other reasons to be outraged, the focus dies down and slowly these hotels get back to the business of business. And the Brunei Investment Agency counts on that. They own nine of the most exclusive hotels in the world. Full disclosure: I’ve stayed at many of them, a couple of them recently, because I hadn’t done my homework and didn’t know who owned them.
They’re nice hotels. The people who work there are kind and helpful and have no part in the ownership of these properties. But let’s be clear, every single time we stay at or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery. Brunei is a Monarchy and certainly any boycott would have little effect on changing these laws. But are we really going to help pay for these human rights violations? Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens? I’ve learned over years of dealing with murderous regimes that you can’t shame them. But you can shame the banks, the financiers and the institutions that do business with them and choose to look the other way.
The hotels listed below are owned by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah:
The Dorchester, London
45 Park Lane, London
Coworth Park, UK
The Beverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills
Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles
Le Meurice, Paris
Hotel Plaza Athenee, Paris
Hotel Eden, Rome
Hotel Principe di Savoia, Milan
At first I thought great. But then I wonder, why Brunei? Why not all the others, including Russia or Trump who cowardly stands behind his white supremest base? Odd.
Huh ? Russia doesn’t have the death penalty for gays. And Trump doesn’t kill gays, he hires them. (The only countries with the death penalty for gays are Muslim ones, in the MidEast, Asia, and Africa. Yet gays are so ridiculous they want MORE Muslims filling up the U.S. population).
When Any country or individual groups commit MURDER by stoning, hanging or any other means tortuous killings because of sexual orientation they should not only be boycotted but have UN Santions placed on them.
The UN doesn’t care. Practically every Muslim country with the death penalty for homosexual acts is a UN member.