Over the last fortnight, QN Magazine broke a number of stories related to the action of the Sultan of Brunei. He recently introduced penalties such as whipping, amputation and death by stoning into his small South-East Asian realm. Tomorrow, Boycott Brunei in Australia are holding a rally in Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens. The protest, opposite the Brunei-owned Royal on the Park Hotel, will protest the laws.

Brunei’s new laws are neither the laws of a religion, nor of a country. They are the laws of one man, Hassanal Bolkiah, Brunei’s all-powerful dictator.

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Nor are the laws about morality – they are about power and control.

The Sultan and royal family’s history of flouting the very sexual mores he is criminalising are well documented.

How wealthy is Brunei?

The sultan is an autocratic ruler and worried about his position. Oil revenues are in decline.

Hassanal has relied on those revenues for years to bribe his people. Subsidies to health, education and other services quieten domestic critics. The people also tolerate his obscene squandering of their national wealth.

It is usually assumed the Sultan’s wealth insulated him from the effects of boycotts and protests. Many attribute a personal wealth of US$20 billion to the sultan. Additionally, control of the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA) gifts him an (assumed) additional US$40 billion.

Oil provides the Sultan with an annual income of about UD$2 billion. That income previously encouraged the BIA to work on long-term financial strategies. Initially it could operate as a mere financial dalliance — not required to perform until 2035 when the oil runs out. Indeed, the investment arms of the BIA tout the aim of long term returns.

Venezuela

However, declining oil prices in recent years see mounting economic problems in various oil producing nations. The people of Venezuela enjoyed an enviable standard of living just a few short years ago but now starve.

Venezuela is important to this topic. Brunei is thought to have just over 1 gigabarrels of oil remaining. Small by world standards, but a lot for a country of less than half a million people. Venezuela however, with the world’s largest known reserves, has over 300 gigabarrels remaining.

When Venezuela finally finds its way to a political solution, we can surmise they will sell that oil for whatever they can get for it. Their need to rebuild their country will send world prices into further decline. That will exacerbate financial problems in countries such as Brunei.

Additionally, oil becomes more expensive to extract as supplies deplete, eventually costing more to take from the ground than it sells for.

Without oil revenues the sultan will need a return on the BIA, but is there a return to be had?

Prince Jefri

Court documents show that the sultans brother Jefri squandered nearly US$15 billion of the BIA’s funds when he was in control a few years ago. He spent an unbelievable amount of the money on sex workers, drugs and other wild extravagances.

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He also bought the Dorchester Collection of hotels, now under the Sultan’s control. The Sultan bought Brisbane’s Royal on the Park decades before.

Billions more proved to be untraceable. When another brother replaced Jefri, he immediately stole another US$2 billion.

The neglect of some of the sultanate’s investments raises more questions. A prime block of land on Queensland’s Gold Coast said by the Courier-Mail to be worth $30 million has sat untouched since the sultan purchased it in 1997. The Royal on the Park, while not a hovel, receives little expenditure.

Likewise, a compound in an upmarket residential area of Singapore, abandoned now for three decades among the large expensive mansions of one the world’s most expensive cities.

Rusting Rolls Royces

In Brunei itself, many government buildings and complexes suffer from a lack of maintenance with others simply abandoned. Stories circulate of cars from the world’s most exclusive collection, which includes 500 Rolls Royces, sitting in the weather to rust for years.

The BIA is probably the world’s least transparent sovereign wealth funds, but are its other assets looked after any better than those that are publicly known?

The British who held Brunei as a protectorate until 1984 set up the BIA before they left. Analysts calculate that the fund is currently worth no more than if the sultan had merely left the money in the bank.

Recently the Chinese constructed a highway in Brunei, causing quiet dissent among the population. Some pondered why a wealthy country needed such largesse, more often seen in third world countries.

A comparative restraint in the sultan’s spending in recent years may indicate declining financial fortune.

Once famed for his lavish expenditure on parties, he recently reigned in costs. He once handed Whitney Houston a blank cheque in return for a performance to fill in as she saw fit. She decided her singing warranted a payment of US$7 million.

However recently family celebrations have seen economies in spending. An oil company sponsored fireworks for one more recent royal wedding.

Will the new laws be enforced?

Brunei’s foreign minister told British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt that gay people are “unlikely” to suffer stoning. Despite the new laws, many people both inside and outside Brunei mount the same argument.

However, the history of the implementation of the laws would suggest otherwise. The Sultan introduced the laws through a staged implementation, with lesser offences criminalised first.

An Indonesian man caught smoking in public during Ramadan first fell foul of the laws.

Then, in 2016 Australian Tony Scott, coach of the Brunei Lawn Bowls team, fell in love with his star female player, a local Muslim.

Jealous teammates reported the couple. 20 Sharia police raided Scott’s home in the middle of the night charging the pair under Sharia law with ‘confinement’. Confinement refers to an unmarried man and woman alone together without a chaperone.

The couple pled guilty to the charge and fled to Australia, incurring $150,000 in expenses including legal fees.

The people in real danger however are not smoking Indonesians or love-smitten Aussies with other homelands to flee to. The real danger is to Bruneian men, women and children, the subjects of an all-powerful dictator, desperate to retain wealth and power.

They are the people who may end up, in the case of women, buried up to their armpits in the ground with a self-righteous crowd of self-righteous religious hypocrites hurling stones at their heads until death.

Will protests and boycotts work?

Writing for The Conversation this week, Paula Gerber, Professor of Human Rights Law at Monash University, argued boycotts won’t work. Instead, she suggested, government and international bodies should quietly put pressure on the sultan.

However, governments in particular generally apply pressure to other governments in response to pressure from their own citizens.

The Australian government for example did nothing to alleviate the suffering of refugees on Manus Island and Nauru until the public pressure became overwhelming.

If global citizens who believe in human rights sit quietly and meekly by and wait for governments to act, the first real response will be on the occasion of the first stoning.

So far, the Australian government’s response to these barbaric laws has been underwhelming to say the least. The Queensland government displayed the greatest degree of moral courage by stopping proposed Bruneian flights into Brisbane.

The UK

The response of the UK government has at times been apologetic and dismissive of the import of the laws.

Of course, the UK enjoys good trade with Brunei, large investment in their country by the BIA, a ready market for armaments and the British supply the contingent of Gurkha’s who guard the sultan and the three judges of the Brunei High Court of Appeal.

Additionally, sources within Brunei indicate a sultan and minions blind-sided by the response the laws. After suffering little from the protests and boycotts a few years ago they thought they probably saw off the worst of it. They quietly implemented the latest stages expecting no one to notice.

Sources within the administration indicate Bruneian embassies worldwide floundered after news broke of the new laws. They received no guidance or talking points from Brunei up until a few days ago.

The Royal on the Park and other Bruneian owned properties simply went dark on social media.

In Brunei itself, other than the quiet listing of the laws on a government website, no announcement has been made and Bruneians are mainly aware of the laws through their access to the internet.

People inside Brunei believe the global response to the laws has rattled the sultan and his sycophantic advisors and point out that they rely on outsiders to publicise the laws.

The sultan brooks no dissent. An Instagram post by Prince Aleem of Brunei who argued against the laws disappeared, along with his account.

Two years ago, a gay Bruneian public servant posted on Facebook against the introduction of new halal charges under Sharia law. Charged with sedition, he then saw the law changed to make him liable to ten years imprisonment. He fled the country and is now a refugee in Canada.

The government owns most media in Brunei and controls all of it.

Mahathir Mohamad

There is a surprising glimmer of hope from neighbouring Malaysia.

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, speaking yesterday on the subject of Malaysia’s own royals, cautioned about giving power to royals.

“They may put their own interests before their states,” he said, “It has happened many times before.”

While Mahathir was speaking in a local context, he is a wily politician. He is well aware of the regional implication of his words.

Where to now?

In Brunei’s capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, two nights ago, there were 100 profiles active on Grindr. Few featured a profile picture.

With no LGBTIQ organisation or venues, LGBTIQ people have few options in Brunei. As LGBTIQ people have always done, Bruneians take phenomenal risks in search of companionship, love and intimacy.

However, who knows what danger Grindr is to them? Of course, they run the predictable danger of the Sharia police themselves using the app to track down gay men. Additionally a Chinese company now owns Grindr making the security of its data is questionable. Particularly as the Chinese government continues to cultivate the sultan.

Khairul, a 19-year-old gay Muslim man from Brunei spoke to Reuters.

“I am scared. The fear of dying has become a reality, while the hope of being accepted by family is now just a dream.”

We can help, by pressuring governments to do everything possible to bring the autocratic dictator of Brunei back to reality. Let’s show him that in today’s global world, there are consequences.

Royal on the Park protest

Boycott Brunei in Australia protest in Brisbane Botanic Gardens Saturday, April 13 from 1pm. Enter opposite the Royal on the Park. More details are available at the Facebook event here.

QN Magazine | For the latest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) news in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.