Kick Brunei Out of TPP Talks, Members of Congress Tell Administration

Democratic and Republican members of Congress are calling on American trade negotiators to kick Brunei out of Trans Pacific Partnership trade talks until its sultan revokes a new Taliban-like penal code that violates human rights.

"Tell Brunei to address its human rights violations as a condition before the U.S. engages in further talks," a group of 119 House members wrote in a letter to U.S. Sec. of State John Kerry and U.S. Trade Rep. Michael Froman. This campaign, led by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Rosa DeLauro (D-CT); Louise Slaughter (D-NY); and Henry Waxman (D-CA), focused on the threat to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons; women and religious minorities in Brunei due to the country's new Sharia-like law. Read the letter here.

Separately, several prominent national lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality organizations sent a letter to President Obama with the same demand. Pride at Work, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, and the National Center for Transgender Equality called on the administration to insist that Brunei revokes its new penal code or face being dropped from the TPP altogether.

The new laws in Brunei, which went into effect on May 1, will be phased in over time. When the third and final phase is implemented, gay men and lesbians, as well as people convicted of adultery, will be stoned to death for their supposed "crimes." The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights has condemned the new laws as a violation of international law. Amnesty International says the new law "allows for cruel and inhuman punishments including stoning to death, whipping and amputation."

Recent events in Brunei fly in the face of bedrock American principles, the Congressional leaders said. "The U.S. must make it clear that we will not tolerate such abuses," they wrote. If we do not inside that Brunei address these human rights atrocities, "the U.S. will lose its leverage to provide economic pressure on countries to reverse unacceptable policies," they wrote.

These actions are just the latest in growing opposition to the secretive TPP trade deal that will lower environmental, labor and human rights standards but protect multinational corporations and investor interests.

Brunei was one of the original signatories to the 2005 Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, a trade agreement that also included Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Although small in size and population, its vast petroleum and natural gas deposits make Brunei one of the world's richest countries.