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George Clooneyis calling for the boycott of Dorchester Collection’s hotels, including The Beverly Hills Hotels and Hotel Bel-Air in California, after he says their owner has activelydiscriminated against the LGBTQ community.
The actor spoke out against the Sultan of Brunei, the head of the Brunei Investment Agency, which owns the Dorchester Collection ofhotelsand resorts in acolumnfor Deadline.
On April 3, Brunei, a country in Southeast Asia, will enact anew death-penalty lawthat allows stoning people who engage in homosexual activities to death.
“At the head of it all is the Sultan of Brunei who is one of the richest men in the world. The Big Kahuna,” theCatch-22star writes. “He owns the Brunei Investment Agency and they in turn own some pretty spectacular hotels.”
The BIA and the Dorchester Collection did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Previously, many people in Hollywood boycotted the Hotel Bel-Air and the Beverly Hills Hotel because of Brunei’s “treatment of the gay community.”
Clooney says they canceled a big fundraiser they had hosted at the Beverly Hills Hotel for years, and many others followed suit. However, the boycott didn’t last long.
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“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,” Clooney writes. “And the Brunei Investment Agency counts on that. They own nine of the most exclusive hotels in the world.”
The actor even admits that he hasstayed at many of the luxurious resortsin his lifetime, writing, “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.”
But Clooney says that’s about to change, and he hopes other people will join him in boycotting the resorts, no matter how luxurious they may be.
“They’re nice hotels. The people who work there are kind and helpful and have no part in the ownership of these properties,” he writes. “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,” he continues. “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.”
source: people.com
