Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday responded to explosive racism claims from her grandson Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, voicing deep concern and sympathizing with their troubles with royal life.
“The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” she said in a statement.
“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately,” she said. “Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much-loved family members.”
Photo: AP
Buckingham Palace has come under mounting pressure to respond to the claims made in an Oprah Winfrey interview first broadcast on Sunday, which triggered a crisis unseen since the anguished days of Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana, in the 1990s.
It set off a whirl of speculation about the identity of the senior royal who asked how dark their child’s skin would be before he was born.
Meghan, whose mother is black and father is white, also spoke about how she had suicidal thoughts, but failed to receive any support during her time in the royal family.
Winfrey was left open-mouthed by the racism claim, which reportedly left the palace in turmoil and scrambling how best to address it.
Prince Charles, Harry’s father and the heir to the throne, earlier ignored a question about what he made of the interview, as he made his first public appearance since the row erupted.
A YouGov poll of 4,656 people after the interview aired on British television on Monday indicated that almost one-third (32 percent) felt the couple was unfairly treated, the same proportion as those who thought the opposite.
However, older people were more likely to side with the royal family, the poll suggested.
Harry and Meghan’s claims have been likened to a bomb being dropped on the UK’s most famous family and one of the kingdom’s most revered institutions.
Attempts have been made to draw in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has himself been accused of racism during his time as a newspaper columnist.
However, he refused to comment, even as political calls mounted for a full inquiry, and the White House and former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke out.
The level of controversy about the royals has not been seen since the very public collapse of the marriage of Harry’s parents.
His mother collaborated with author Andrew Morton in a revealing 1992 biography and gave a bombshell BBC television interview in 1995.
In it, she said both she and Prince Charles had been unfaithful, how he was unfit to be king, and that she felt isolated, struggling with self-harm and bulimia.
Morton said Harry and Meghan’s claims would “shudder down through the generations in the same way that Diana’s did.”
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS