Charles’s remarks against Chinese leaders stir storm
LONDON, Feb 22: Britain’s Prince Charles intended to be hostile when he described China’s leaders as ‘appalling old waxworks’ in private diaries that he is fighting to keep out of the press, a lawyer for a major British newspaper argued on Wednesday.
The heir to the British throne is suing the Mail on Sunday in the High Court in London, accusing the mass-circulation newspaper of breach of confidentiality and copyright.
He also wants the return of diaries leaked by a ‘disloyal former employee’ — named in court as former secretary Sarah Good all — after the tabloid revealed in November last year that in one of them he described China’s communist leadership as ‘appalling old waxworks’.
He made the unflattering remark in a diary he kept of his trip to Hong Kong in July 1997 to attend the British colony’s handover to Chinese sovereignty — a moment he described as ‘the great Chinese takeaway’.
“He was not saying, ‘These people look a bit funny but this is a splendid regime’,” the Mail on Sunday’s lawyer Mark Wary told the court on Wednesday, arguing that Prince Charles was not just any private citizen.
“He was saying: ‘This is a terrible bunch of people, just like the old Soviet regime, and we must not associate with them.’
He was expressing political hostility.”
In a witness statement that the Prince of Wales originally wanted to keep secret, Mark Boland, his former assistant and deputy private secretary from 1996 to 2002, gave a candid glimpse of how he views his role.
“He often referred to himself as a ‘dissident’ working against the prevailing political consensus,” said Mr Boland in the statement that was read out in the High Court.
Mr Boland recalled that Charles, 57, an indefatigable memo writer, regularly shot off letters to politicians about issues of the day, defying an unwritten rule that British royals are above vulgar politics.
“A good example of this is his vigorous campaign against genetically modified foods,” he said. Charles is a well-known advocate of organic farming, even marketing his own Duchy of Cornwall brand of organic products.
“Despite our best efforts, he did not always avoid politically contentious issues, if he felt strongly about particular issues or government policies,” said Mr Boland, who was giving evidence for the Mail on Sunday.
“In fact, he would readily embrace the political aspects of any contentious issue he was interested in and this is an aspect of his role which the Prince saw as particularly important.”
Mr Boland’s statement also confirmed that Charles deliberately boycotted a banquet hosted by China’s then president, Kiang Zelman, during a state visit to London in 1999.
“He did this as a deliberate snub ... because he did not approve of the Chinese regime and is a great supporter of the Dalai Lama,” the Tibetan spiritual leader who lives in exile in India, Mr Boland said.
He said he was given ‘a direct and personal instruction’ by Charles to draw the media’s attention to the boycott — a point disputed in court by the prince’s current private secretary, Sir Michael Peat.
“I am informed by him that he gave no instruction to draw the media’s attention to his failure to attend the banquet or to publish any material critical of the Chinese government,” Sir Peat said.
He added: “Speeches and articles are cleared beforehand with the relevant government department as requested.” —AFP
