US TV star Jay Leno latest to shun Brunei-owned hotels over hudud laws

(The Star) – US television star Jay Leno (pic) on Monday joined a growing list of celebrities vowing to boycott a luxury hotel chain linked to Brunei’s sultan after he introduced a controversial Islamic penal code in his country.

Brunei’s all-powerful Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah announced last Wednesday that he would push ahead with the sharia law that would eventually include tough penalties such as death by stoning.

Former late-night talk show host Leno, speaking at a small protest outside the sultan-owned Beverly Hills Hotel, said: “What is this, Berlin, 1933? This doesn’t seem far off what happened in the Holocaust.

“Come on people, it’s 2014. Evil flourishes when good people do nothing.”

Virgin group founder Richard Branson said during the weekend that Virgin employees would not stay at the exclusive Dorchester Collection hotel chain, which includes The Dorchester in London and the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.

“No @virgin employee, nor our family, will stay at Dorchester Hotels until the Sultan abides by basic human rights,” the British billionaire posted on Twitter.

Others who have called for a boycott include comedian Stephen Fry, TV host Sharon Osbourne and comedian Ellen DeGeneres.

The US group Feminist Majority Foundation said it had also pulled its annual Global Women’s Rights Awards, co-chaired by Jay and wife Mavis Leno, from the Beverly Hills Hotel in protest.

The Dorchester Collection is reportedly owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, a sovereign wealth fund under the oil-rich sultanate’s Ministry of Finance.

The sultan’s move has sparked rare domestic criticism of the fabulously wealthy ruler on the Muslim-majority country’s active social media, and international condemnation including from the UN’s human rights office.

But the sultan has defended the implementation of the law, meant to shore up Islam and guard the South-East Asian country against outside influences.