Press Trust of India
London, August 14: Prince William and wife Kate Middleton have objected to the harassment of their two-year-old son Prince George and new-born Princess Charlotte by paparazzi, who are using dangerous tactics to snap images of the popular British royal family. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge authorised an open letter to be issued to the world media by Kensington Palace urging restraint from publishing unauthorised pictures of the little prince and princess. “I am writing to provide an overview of the current challenges facing Kensington Palace as we seek to protect Prince George and Princess Charlotte from harassment and surveillance by paparazzi photographers.
“I hope our experience will inform the ongoing effort to uphold standards on the protection of children in a rapidly changing media landscape,” reads the letter, signed by Jason Kauf, communications secretary to the royal couple. “The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have expressed their gratitude to British media organisations for their policy of not publishing unauthorised photos of their children. “This stance, guided not just by their wishes as parents, but by the standards and codes of the industry as it relates to all children, is to be applauded,” it adds.
The palace says photographers have hidden themselves in car trunks, obscured themselves in sand dunes, and used other children to take pictures of Prince George. The letter said that some organisations, mostly in Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand and the US have published photos of Prince George in “unacceptable circumstances”. Prince William, 33, the second in line to Britain’s throne, has always believed paparazzi photographers in Paris were ultimately responsible for his mother Princess Diana’s death in 1997, when her car crashed in an underpass, trying to escape photographers on mopeds.
The letter reads: “It is of course upsetting that such tactics – reminiscent as they are of past surveillance by groups intent on doing more than capturing images – are being deployed to profit from the image of a two-year-old boy. “In a heightened security environment such tactics are a risk to all involved. “The worry is that it will not always be possible to quickly distinguish between someone taking photos and someone intending to do more immediate harm,” it added.
