Amnesty sounds the alarm over stoning
Amnesty warned in 2019: in Brunei, sex between men was to be punished by stoning. Then came the boycott.
On 27 March 2019, Amnesty International issued an urgent warning to the world. In the Sultanate of Brunei on the island of Borneo, new criminal provisions were to come into force in a few days. Sex between men could in future be punished by death by stoning, theft by amputation. Brunei must stop these cruel plans immediately, the organisation demanded. And the world must condemn them unequivocally.
The government had barely announced the new parts of its Sharia Penal Code. An inconspicuous notice on the Attorney General's website was enough. The law had been introduced step by step since 2014, and the harshest provisions had been on ice for years after fierce criticism. Same-sex acts had already been prohibited in Brunei and carried long prison sentences. Now it would have been the only country in South-East Asia to provide for the death penalty for them. Women faced whipping for lesbian sex.
The warning did not go unheard. Within days, George Clooney called for a boycott of luxury hotels owned by the Sultan, including the Dorchester in London and the Beverly Hills Hotel. Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres joined in. Several companies barred their employees from staying at these hotels, and the United Nations also condemned the law.
At the beginning of May, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah gave way, at least in part. In a speech marking the start of Ramadan, he declared that the de facto moratorium on executions that had been in place for decades also applied to the new criminal law. He would not hear of a climbdown and preferred to speak of misunderstandings. The law itself remained in force, as did flogging and amputation. The death penalty for love therefore remains in the statute book; it is simply not carried out.