Category: Politics

Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa greeted the King and Queen Camilla at Faleolo International Airport …reports Asian Lite News

King Charles has arrived in Samoa for a four-day state visit where he will preside for the first time over a gathering of Commonwealth presidents and prime ministers.

Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa greeted the King and Queen Camilla at Faleolo International Airport where a red carpet had been rolled out amid high winds and last-minute vacuum cleaning.

The Royal Samoan Police Band began playing as the couple alighted and met local officials.

The King and Queen, who ended their six-day tour of Australia on Tuesday, posted a message on social media saying they “couldn’t wait” to arrive in Samoa and experience the “warmth” of the country’s ancient traditions.

The tweet included a few words in Samoan which loosely translated as “looking forward to meeting the Samoan people”.

Samoa, a small country in the central South Pacific Ocean made up of an archipelago of nine islands, is hosting a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) which has the theme “One Resilient Common Future”.

The King, as head of the Commonwealth, will formally open the event that will also be attended by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Charles deputised for Queen Elizabeth II during the last CHOGM staged by Rwanda in 2022, and in Samoa will be joined by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

The route from the airport to Apia – Samoa’s capital – had been spruced up for the royal visit on Wednesday. Each village along the road had adopted a country, with residents decorating their houses and adorning their lawns with the corresponding flags.

Flashing lights were put in trees, bushes and on roof tops, while car tyres were repurposed as flower pots and painted bright colours. Climate change, a subject close to the King’s heart, is expected to top the agenda at the meeting held in a part of the world very vulnerable to rising sea levels.

While reparations are not officially on the table, the subject is likely to come up as this group of countries was brought together by British colonisation. The UK government has said there will no official apology or reparations.

The King and Queen wrapped up the Australian leg of their tour on Tuesday after completing a long list of engagements. Between them, on Tuesday alone the royal couple visited the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence, a food bank, a social housing project, a literacy initiative and a community barbecue.

They met two leading cancer researchers and celebrated the Sydney Opera House’s 50th anniversary. An Australian arm of the King’s Foundation was officially launched, expanding a charity which promotes sustainability and provides training in traditional craft skills.

But it was not an entirely straightforward trip. On Monday, an Australian senator defended heckling the King and accusing him of genocide after he addressed Parliament House, telling the BBC “he’s not of this land”. Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal Australian woman, interrupted the ceremony in the capital Canberra by shouting for about a minute before she was escorted away by security.

After making claims of genocide against “our people”, she could be heard yelling: “This is not your land, you are not my King.” But Aboriginal elder Aunty Violet Sheridan, who had earlier welcomed the King and Queen, said Thorpe’s protest was “disrespectful”, adding: “She does not speak for me.”

The ceremony concluded without any reference to the incident, and the royal couple proceeded to meet hundreds of people who had waited outside to greet them.

ALSO READ: Starmer rules out ban on Israel arms exports  

The first breach said Lord Alli should have registered himself as an unremunerated director of The Charlie Parsons Foundation, as well as a trustee….reports Asian Lite News

Labour donor Lord Alli breached four parliamentary rules over his registration of interests, a standards watchdog has found.

Starmer’s largest donor was found to have failed to include all his roles at a charity, did not register he had a controlling interest in a media company and did not register he was a director of a British Virgin Islands-based firm in time.

Lord Alli, a TV executive who has given more than £700,000 to Labour over the past 20 years, was recommended to write a letter of apology to the chair of the Lords’ conduct committee, Baroness Manningham-Buller.

In his letter, he wrote: “I am writing to you today to offer my apology for my breach of conduct by not registering my interests correctly. I will endeavour to keep to the Code of Conduct at all times to avoid such circumstances again.”

The first breach said Lord Alli should have registered himself as an unremunerated director of The Charlie Parsons Foundation, as well as a trustee.

He helped set up the charity in 2011 with Charlie Parsons, who created the Survivor reality TV series, to invest in “new talent, new projects and new business ideas”, mainly in the TV and entertainment industry.

The second breach found Lord Alli removed himself prematurely as a “person with significant control” of Silvergate BP Bidco Limited, the production company that produces the Peter Rabbit television programme. He also prematurely removed his entry saying he had a “shareholding amounting to a controlling interest” in the company.

The fourth breach was the late registration as an unremunerated director of MAC (BVI) Limited, an offshore British Virgin Islands subsidiary of 450 PLC, an investment firm based in tax haven Jersey Lord Alli had declared he was a chairman for.

Lord Alli previously said the omission was an “unintentional error” and he “had not realised” until he was asked by journalists in September.

The peer came under scrutiny in September over the tens of thousands of pounds he has given to Labour MPs to cover clothes, holidays and work events. According to data unveiled by Sky News’ Westminster Accounts project, he gave Sir Keir more than £39,000 in gifts and hospitality over the course of the last parliament.

This year alone, the prime minister has received nearly £19,000 worth of work clothes and several pairs of glasses from Lord Alli as well as £20,000 worth of accommodation. Starmer said this was to allow his son to study for his GCSEs in peace at the former TV executive’s central London flat while the family home was surrounded by media during the general election.

The PM, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy PM Angela Rayner have said they will no longer accept donations to pay for clothes following the backlash.

ALSO READ: Starmer rules out ban on Israel arms exports  

The prime minister is under pressure to discuss reparatory justice with Commonwealth countries, most of which are former UK colonies, in Samoa this week…reports Asian Lite News

Keir Starmer has insisted he wants to “look forward” rather than have “very long endless discussions about reparations on the past” in his first comments on the issue before the Commonwealth summit.

The prime minister is under pressure to discuss reparatory justice with Commonwealth countries, most of which are former UK colonies, in Samoa this week.

Speaking to reporters travelling with him for the summit, Starmer said Commonwealth countries were “facing real challenges on things like climate in the here and now”.

“That’s where I’m going to put my focus, rather than what will end up being very, very long, endless discussions about reparations on the past,” he said. “This is about stance, really, looking forward rather than looking backwards.

“Slavery is abhorrent … there’s no question about that. But I think from my point of view and taking the approach I’ve just taken, I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work with them on the current future-facing challenges than spend a lot of time on the past.”

Caricom, a group of 15 Caribbean countries, has indicated it will push Starmer and the foreign secretary, David Lammy, on the issue at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Samoa.

In 2018 Lammy, then a backbench Labour MP, called for reparations to be paid to Caribbean nations. But in government Labour has ruled out apologising over Britain’s role in transatlantic slavery. Starmer said the focus of the summit should be “growth and trade” between Commonwealth countries.

The government also announced a new UK trade centre of expertise based in the Foreign Office, which will advise developing countries on competing in global markets and connect them with UK businesses.

The trade centre is intended to boost economic ties with the Commonwealth. Six members – Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda – are projected to be among the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world by 2027. The combined GDP of the Commonwealth is expected to exceed $19.5tn in the next three years.

Starmer’s comments on reparations prompted criticism from historians and campaigners who said they showed a lack of leadership and a fundamental misunderstanding about what leaders in the global south had been calling for.

Eric Phillips, the chair of the Guyana Reparations Committee, said: “I just don’t understand the relevance of the Commonwealth if PM Starmer takes this cruel approach.”

He argued it had been slavery that underpinned, nurtured and rewarded “the rampant capitalism that has today created the climate change crisis”, adding: “Britain … wants to trade with Commonwealth countries now that Brexit has hurt its economy. The trading principles are purely capitalistic and against the interest of former colonies. No reparations, no trade should be the new motto of countries that seek reparations.”

Liliane Umubyeyi, the director of African Futures Lab, said: “Heads of states like the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, have been saying that the demands for reparations don’t concern only what happened in the past, they concern contemporary conditions of inequality.”

Prof Verene A Shepherd, of the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination and director of the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies, described Starmer’s remarks as dismissive.

She said they “will not make the campaign go away, and I hope that those who continue to be affected by the legacies of British colonialism will tell him so when they see him at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting”.

The veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott said: “It is disappointing that the PM has been so dismissive of the opportunity to debate reparations … the descendants of slaves live with the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade in the here and now.”

The UN judge Patrick Robinson concluded last year that the UK owed more than £18tn in reparations for its historical involvement in slavery in 14 countries. But Downing Street has said the issue is “not on the agenda” at Chogm, and Keir Starmer said on Wednesday that he wants to be “facing forward” rather than have “very long, endless discussions about reparations on the past”.

Campaigners argue that in a number of Commonwealth nations, the generational impacts of crimes against humanity have been compounded not only by a modern-day system of debt that has favoured western interests, but also by extreme weather events, caused or made worse by the carbon emissions of wealthy nations.

The demands extend beyond the Commonwealth. The African Union, which also includes former French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies, has joined forces with the Caribbean Community (Caricom) to put pressure on former slave-owning European nations to engage with the reparations movement. Caricom has drawn up a 10-point plan for reparatory justice.

In Britain in recent years, organisations including the Guardian, the Church of England and the Bank of England have apologised for their links to slavery. The UK is yet to make an apology.

King Charles, in a speech to Commonwealth nations in 2022, said ways must be found to “acknowledge our past”, including slavery, which he had previously described as an “appalling atrocity”. But he has stopped short of saying sorry.

ALSO READ: Starmer rules out ban on Israel arms exports