LONDON - Travel agents, London's transport network, and finance houses were among a rising number of companies on Friday to cut ties with businesses owned by Brunei to protest over the Sultanate's introduction of the death penalty for gay sex and adultery.
The small Muslim-majority former British protectorate on April 3 rolled out further Islamic Sharia laws, which punish sodomy, adultery, and rape with death, including by stoning, and theft with amputation, sparking a global outcry.
The move prompted a corporate backlash after actor George Clooney and singer Elton John called for a boycott of hotels owned by the Southeast Asian country, including the Dorchester in London and the Beverley Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.
STA Travel, a global travel agency owned by privately-held Swiss conglomerate Diethelm Keller Group, said it would no longer sell flights on national carrier Royal Brunei Airlines.
"We've taken this stance to add our voice to the calls on Brunei to reverse this change in the law and in support of LGBTQI people everywhere," the company said in a statement.
Virgin Australia Airlines, the second biggest airline in Australia after Qantas, ended an agreement that offered discounted tickets on Royal Brunei Airlines for staff.
Royal Brunei did not respond to requests for comment.
Transport For London (TfL), which is responsible for London's transport system, said it was removing adverts promoting Brunei as a tourism destination from the city's public transport network due to "great public sensitivity."
Deutsche Bank banned its staff from staying in the 9 luxury hotels of the Dorchester Collection, which is owned by Brunei's state-owned Brunei Investment Agency (BIA).
BIA did not respond to a request for comment. The UK-based Sovereign Wealth Center estimates the BIA has US$39 billion of assets under management.
The Dorchester Collection made a public appeal, saying its values were "far removed from the politics of ownership".
"We understand people's anger and frustration but this is a political and religious issue that we don't believe should be played out in our hotels and amongst our 3,630 employees," the Dorchester Collection said in a statement on its website.
But this did not prevent numerous organizations moving their events elsewhere.
British estate agent Knight Frank, property industry networking group Movers and Shakers, which has about 300 corporate members, and property investment company Landsec said they would not use Dorchester Collection hotels.
As well as owning the hotel group, the BIA holds about 4 percent of London-listed digital tech venture capital firm Draper Esprit PLC which it acquired in 2018.
Draper Esprit's CEO Simon Cook said the company "naturally abhor" the moves in Brunei but added the BIA bought shares on the open market and has no "influence either on our company culture or our investment decisions".
The backlash also spread to universities.
More than 50,000 people signed a petition calling on Oxford University to rescind an honorary degree awarded to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 72, the world's second-longest reigning monarch and prime minister of the oil-rich country.
The university's information office said they shared the international condemnation of Brunei's new penal code and backed the United Nations' call to stop this entering into force.
"At present, the University has not taken any decision on rescinding the Sultan of Brunei's 1993 Honorary Degree of Civil Law by Diploma," the university said in a statement.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - Sri Lanka on Wednesday began interviewing 47 applicants for two positions as hangmen, officials said, as Amnesty International urged Colombo not to bring back capital punishment.
President Maithripala Sirisena announced in February that Sri Lanka would end a 43-year moratorium on executions this month in a Philippines-inspired war on drugs.
An official said 47 male applicants would be interviewed on Wednesday and Thursday, after the government advertised the vacancies in February.
But the successful candidates may face a delay in carrying out their new role.
"Since there is no living person in Sri Lanka who has carried out an execution, we need to send the new recruits abroad for training," the official, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP, adding that Colombo was also yet to identify a country to provide training.
"The rope (used for hangings) has not been used at all since it was imported (in 2015), it will have to be tested and certified."
Rights group Amnesty International meanwhile said resuming hangings would not end drug-related crime and that innocent people could be executed due to flaws in Sri Lanka's criminal justice system.
Sirisena has said he was inspired by the anti-drug war in the Philippines and was keen to replicate the success of his counterpart Rodrigo Duterte. Sirisena has since deployed security forces in his battle against drugs.
In a nationally televised event in Colombo, Sirisena pledged to end the spread of narcotics within two years.
Restoring capital punishment is a centerpiece of his anti-drugs policy.
Criminals in Sri Lanka are regularly given death sentences for murder, rape and drug-related crimes but until now their punishments have been commuted to life in jail.
Sri Lanka's last judicial hanging was in 1976, but an executioner was in post until his retirement in 2014. Three replacements since have quit after short stints at the unused gallows.
On Monday, Sirisena witnessed the destruction of nearly 800 kilos of cocaine seized between 2016 and 2018.
In February, police seized nearly 300 kilos of heroin worth $17 million, the island's biggest haul, at a Colombo shopping mall. In 2013, police seized 260 kilos of heroin brought into the country hidden inside tractors imported from Pakistan.
Sri Lanka's biggest drug haul, by weight, was in December 2016 when police seized 800 kilos of cocaine. Six months earlier, authorities discovered 301 kilos of cocaine inside a shipping container.
Authorities believe the Indian Ocean island is also being used as a trafficking transit point.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON, United States - American actor George Clooney has called for a boycott of nine Brunei-owned hotels over the sultanate's imposition of the death penalty for gay sex and adultery.
"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," Clooney wrote on website Deadline Hollywood.
"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," he added.
The nine hotels are located in the US, Britain, France and Italy.
Brunei will implement the harsh new penal code -- which also mandates amputation of a hand and foot for theft -- starting next Wednesday.
Homosexuality is already illegal in the tiny sultanate, but it will now become a capital offense. The law only applies to Muslims.
Brunei first announced the measures in 2013, but implementation has been delayed as officials worked out the practical details and in the teeth of opposition by rights groups.
In addition to film-making chops that have netted him two Oscars, Clooney is known for his globe-trotting political activism, especially his tireless campaigning to draw attention to the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
