Ellen DeGeneres told fans to boycott several hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei on Tuesday ahead of Brunei’s anti-gay law going into effect on Wednesday.
“Tomorrow, the country of #Brunei will start stoning gay people to death. We need to do something now,” wrote DeGeneres on Twitter.
“Please boycott these hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei. Raise your voices now. Spread the word. Rise up.”
Brunei fully implemented a new Sharia penal code on Wednesday, effectively making sodomy between two men or unmarried heterosexual couples punishable by stoning to death or whipping with 100 strokes, according to Australia’s ABC News. The same punishment goes for those who commit adultery.
The country’s legislation also permits amputation as a penalty for theft.
In addition to running Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th leader of the Southeast Asian country, happens to own nine hotels in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy. The image shared by DeGeneres features the names of those hotels and has been disseminated widely on social media in an effort to make the boycott global.
DeGeneres’ missive comes on the heels of George Clooney penning a scathing op-ed for Deadline Hollywood published last week.
“They’re nice hotels. The people who work there are kind and helpful and have no part in the ownership of these properties. 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,” wrote Clooney.
The actor went on to ask readers, “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,” he wrote.