Three words come back to haunt Prince Harry

The Duke of Sussex’s response to disturbing new claims exposes three harsh words he said about his own family.

COMMENT

If there is one thing that Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex has well and truly mastered in the last four years, it is speaking. On broadcast TV, on Netflix, in interviews, and in print and to James Corden, Oprah Winfrey, ITV’s Tom Bradby, Anderson Cooper, Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan, Today’s Hoda Kotb, his ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer, renowned trauma specialist Dr Gabor Maté, and many more.

The Duke of Sussex is a man known, renowned, for his willingness to use his voice to call out the wrongs that have been done to he and wife Meghan the Duchess of Sussex.

As he put it while on the Spare publicity trail speaking to Cooper about the royal family’s relationship with the British media, “silence is betrayal”.

Strong words. Powerful words. But today, are they believable words?

Prince Harry has proven himself to be a man who likes to chat. Picture: Supplied

African Parks, a charity that the duke served as president for since 2017 before being promoted to the board last year, is now facing a second (yes, second) round of horrific allegations of armed employees torturing indigenous peoples.

And Harry? He has been … silent.

Not even a three line statement to the press saying he found the fresh claims highly concerning if proven to be true.

Over the weekend, the details from a new book – Entrepreneurs in the Wild by Olivier van Beemen – were published by the Times’ Kate Mansey, alleging that the professional guards employed by African Parks (AP) had beaten and tortured local communities in Zambia, including using a torture method called ‘the Swing’.

This is not a case of an isolated bad apple. Entrepreneurs, Mansey reports, “includes dozens of incidents of alleged abuse from interviews conducted with victims and those who claim to have perpetrated the abuse, including existing and former African Parks staff.”

AP has said that van Beemen is biased and that Entrepreneurs is “deeply flawed,” according to the Times.

Prince Harry served as president for African Parks since 2017 before being promoted to the board last year. Picture: Dominic Lipinski – Pool /Getty Images

And Harry? What has he said of this fresh round of disturbing claims?

“The Duke of Sussex was approached for comment,” per the Times.

These Entrepreneurs allegations come after in January this year, the Daily Mail reported that AP guards in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has raped, tortured and beaten the indigenous Baka people, and that at least one victim had died of their injuries.

Those Congo claims? Harry was reportedly told about them 11 months ago

Here’s how things played out, according to the Mail.

In May last year, the human rights organisation Survival International says it wrote to the duke about atrocities they say were committed by AP guards towards the Baka people. Also sent to Harry was a video message from a Baka man named Eyaya, in which he said, “Now there is only torture in the forest.”

Harry responded to Survival’s letter and video within two weeks, including to an earlier Times report, sending “an initially sympathetic letter, promising to escalate the concerns to the most senior ranks of the organisation.” (AP’s chief executive Peter Fearnhead was a guest at the Sussexes’ wedding.)

“When the Duke became aware of these serious allegations, he immediately escalated them to the CEO and chairman of the board of African Parks, the appropriate people to handle next steps,” his spokesman later said.

That was in May. In November last year, Harry was elevated to AP’s board.

African Parks chief executive Peter Fearnhead was a guest at the Sussexes’ wedding in May 2018. Picture: Aaron Chown – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Fiore Longo, campaigns director of Survival International, subsequently said the human rights group had been “very disappointed” to hear nothing from Harry after that May exchange.

In January, the Mail and Survival International went public with their allegations about AP guards’ alleged violent abuse of the Baka people.

Mother-of-two Ella Ene told the Mail that she had been raped by an AP guard while holding her one-month-old son: “I was holding my baby while being raped and trying to protect him. My first reaction had been to protect my baby. It was very violent.”

Father-of-seven Justin Zoa recounted to the British paper how went into the forest in search of honey when AP guards arrested and handcuffed him in front of his wife and children. Later, Zoa says the guards “lit candles, dripping the wax on to my back, before taking off their belts and whipping me on the same part of my back. I was very scared. I thought I would die, and seeing my wife and children crying made it even more painful.”

Medard Mossendjo from the village of Biessi told the Mail that both he and his wife had been beaten “hard” by AP guards who were “slapping and punching us.”

AP says that after being made aware of the claims, they had “immediately launched an investigation through an external law firm”.

How are we to understand these two things?

Harry sat in front of 60 Minutes’ Cooper last year hauling his own family over the coals for their failures, all done for the benefit of TV cameras and to gee up book-buying public, arguing that not speaking out, that staying zipped-lipped, was a “betrayal”.

And now, with AP facing a second round of allegations of torture, the duke has yet to comment.

What was that about silence equating to betrayal?

Prince Harry in an interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. Picture: CBS

Also, imagine for a second that this exact same situation was playing out – allegations of rape and torture – but concerning a charity closely associated with Prince William or with Kate the Princess of Wales. Especially if it turned out that the Waleses had known for six months and had, even with these allegations hanging overhead, then accepted more senior positions with the charities?

The prince and princess would be pilloried and rightly so. The hue and cry would be so loud someone would have to outfit the Beefeaters with ear muffs.

Harry has repeatedly popped up to tell us all how important helping others is to him such as 2021’s “service is universal” and 2023’s “My life is charity – always has been, always will be.”

So where is that staunch commitment to using his voice to help others when it comes to Ella Ene, raped while holding her newborn? When it comes to Justin Zoa and his children?

I’m sure there are serious legal complications to the allegations against AP that might restrict what Harry could potentially say publicly about these torture and rape claims but is saying nothing acceptable?

“Harry talks about social justice. He has spoken out about racism in the past,” Survival International’s Longo told the Times earlier this year. “When you give your name to an organisation, you are part of that organisation. You have a duty to act, if there are human rights abuses going on.”

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media commentators.