In a guest column with Deadline, Hollywood heavyweight George Clooney has called for a boycott against the Sultan of Brunei. Posted Thursday afternoon, Clooney’s article comes as the country of Brunei prepares to implement a barbaric law on April 3rd. The Sultan’s law calls for the whipping and stoning of all Brunei citizens proven to be members of the LGBTQ community or adulterers.

While this law has no effect on the United States, the Sultan of Brunei’s own business—Brunei Investment Agency—owns a number of hotels throughout the country, including two in Southern California. Clooney mentions them in his article:

“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.”

Clooney admits to staying at these hotels in the past, having not done his homework on who owns them. He acknowledges that the staff at these hotels are kind, helpful and have no connection to the hotel ownership. Yet, Brunei’s decision can not go unnoticed.

“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… 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.“

This is not the first time Clooney has placed himself in international affairs. Following in the footsteps of his journalist father, Clooney has been involved in numerous humanitarian works, including Not On Our Watch (focusing global attention and resources to stop and prevent mass atrocities), Hope For Haiti Now (a telethon that collected donations for the 2010 Haiti earthquake victims), advocates for a resolution of the Darfur conflict, supported the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and—with his wife, appointee to the C Panel of the Public International Law Panel of Counsel, Amal Clooney—visited Syrian refugees living in Berlin.

Clooney’s full article is currently posted on the Deadline website. Click on the sourced link below to read it in its entirety.

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Source: Deadline.

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