LONDON: Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has returned an honorary degree awarded by Britain's Oxford University after a global backlash led by celebrities including George Clooney and Elton John for proposing theNearly 120,000 people had signed a petition by April calling on Oxford University to rescind the honorary law degree awarded in 1993 to the sultan, the world's second-longest reigning monarch and prime minister of the oil-rich country.
The law, which the United Nations condemned, had prompted celebrities and rights groups to seek a boycott on hotels owned by the sultan, including the Dorchester in London and the Beverley Hills Hotel in Los Angeles.Several multinational companies have since put a ban on staff using the sultan's hotels, while some travel companies have stopped promoting Brunei as a tourist destination.
Socially conservative attitudes prevail across Asia where Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore ban sexual relationships between men, and Indonesia has seen an increase in raids targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people recently. Brunei, a former British protectorate of about 400,000 people nestled between two Malaysian states on Borneo island, was the first country in the region to adopt the criminal component of sharia at a national level in 2014.