The Sultan of Brunei defended the stoning of homosexuals: "His goal is to preserve the inviolability of the family line"

The reform of the Penal Code was officially announced for the first time at the end of March by the Sultan Hbadbad Bolkiah. However, it did not appear in any of the media of this small but prosperous nation of Southeast Asia.

The new order includes stoning as a punishment for the "crime" of maintaining homobadual relations. In addition, establishes mutilation of the hand or foot by theft; capital punishment for blasphemy, defamation of the name of the Prophet Muhammad and apostasy; and flogging for abortion, among others. They are all based on sharia law, Islamic law.

The news has sparked the indignation of the international community. On 18 April, the European Parliament approved a resolution condemning Brunei for failing to respect fundamental rights aspects such as respect for minorities, political dissent or same-bad relations.

In response, the Sultanate sent this week a four-page letter to the European Parliament, in which it defended the wild laws. The kingdom called for "tolerance, respect and understanding" in relation to the country's desire to preserve its traditional values ​​and "family lineage".

"The criminalization of adultery and sodomy aims to preserve the inviolability of the family line and marriage for Muslims, especially women, "says the letter.

In addition, the Sultanate authorities have sought to relativize the impact of the sanctions, saying that they would be difficult to apply. "Criminal convictions have an extremely high threshold of proof, which requires at least two or four men of high moral character and piety as witnesses, to the exclusion of any form of circumstantial evidence (…) as well as a very high level of tests "without doubt" for all aspects, it goes beyond the level of the Anglo-Saxon law of "beyond a reasonable doubt".

This is the requirement of the "rules of godliness of the male witness", according to the letter sent by Brunei, which will be "extremely difficult to find at this time, to the point stoning may depend only on the offender's confession"

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, noted that the implementation of these laws "would be a serious setback for human rights in Brunei".

"The new Criminal Code is fundamentally brutal in imposing these archaic methods of punishment on acts that should not be considered crimes.said Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch.

For his part, the 72-year-old Sultan, famous for his opulent life, with several love scandals, said that the measure will maintain "peace and order". The goal of the monarch would be "to educate, respect and protect the legitimate rights of all individuals of all races and all faiths".

The sultanate, millionaire thanks to its huge reserves of oil and gas, began to introduce sanctions based on Islamic law in 2014, with a first battery of amendments for less severe penalties.

But the successful international boycott campaign against the corporate framework under the patronage of the Sultanate, including a chain of luxury hotels in the United States and Europe, temporary suspension of the introduction of the most severe penalties and corporal punishment, planned for the end of 2016.

Although the current Penal Code provides for the death penalty, Brunei has not executed since 1957 and the last sentence is from 2017 for a drug offense. The new legislation will mainly apply to citizens professing the Muslim religion, who represent 70% of the population of the Sultanate, or about 300,000 indigenous people, although in some cases it will also be used with foreigners or religious believers. Other beliefs, mainly Buddhists and Christians.