Queen Elizabeth’s soft power in Asia went beyond the Commonwealth
Papua New Guineans “from the mountains, valleys and coasts rose up this morning to the news that our queen has been taken to rest by God,” the country’s Prime Minister James Marape declared on the death of the U.K.’s Queen Elizabeth II.
“She was the anchor of our Commonwealth, and for PNG we fondly call her ‘Mama Queen,'” he said during his address on Friday.
Papua New Guinea is one of five Asia-Pacific nations where the U.K. monarch is still the titular head of state — Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu are the others. A further eight countries in the region — Bangladesh, Brunei, India, Malaysia, the Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore and Sri Lanka — are part of the 56-member Commonwealth comprising mostly former British colonies and headed by the British monarch.
The tributes from those nations blot out for now emerging deeper questions about whether they will maintain the same relationship with Elizabeth’s son and successor, King Charles III. So far, no Asian country has followed the example of the Caribbean island state of Antigua and Barbuda, whose prime minister has promised a referendum on removing the U.K. monarch as head of state.
Queen Elizabeth II is escorted by soldiers from Papua New Guinea on her arrival at the airport on October 13, 1982 in Port Moresby.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has in the past expressed support for his country becoming a republic, told the broadcaster ABC on Sunday that now was “not a time to talk about our system of government.”
“Quite clearly, this is a time of national mourning,” he said, against a backdrop of calls by Greens party leader Adam Bandt and others for Australia to ditch the U.K. monarchy.
The debate in Australia and other Asia-Pacific countries over their ties with the British monarchy will unfold as the distance from Elizabeth’s death grows. Charles has a different public persona to his mother and has previously been outspoken — sometimes contentiously — on political debates on subjects such as the environment.
In Asia, the new king will have to reckon with the absence of the personal bonds the queen forged during decades of trips to countries there. These included some — such as China — with whom the U.K. has difficult political relations.
Charles will also have to deal with pressure in some Commonwealth countries for apologies and reparations for British colonial abuses.
Imperial-era atrocities loomed over the pageant and statements of mutual appreciation during visits Elizabeth paid in 1961, 1983 and 1997 to India, where as many as 2 million people died in communal violence when the U.K. pulled out in 1947. On her last trip, to mark the 50th anniversary of independence, she finally broached the 1919 massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in the northern city of Amritsar, when hundreds of unarmed civilians peacefully protesting colonial rule were gunned down on a British general’s orders.
“It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our past — Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example,” Elizabeth said, before laying a wreath in Amritsar.
Queen Elizabeth II watches a Chinese Lion Dance troop perform during her visit to the Toa Payoh Housing Development Board estate in Singapore on March 17, 2006.
Elizabeth found the going more comfortable during three visits to Singapore, where the Cambridge-educated founding father Lee Kuan Yew modeled aspects of the new city-state on precepts proclaimed by the U.K., such as the rule of law.
During her last state visit, the queen stayed at the Raffles Hotel, an iconic white building preserved in its colonial style and named after Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who chose the island for an East India Company trading post in 1819.
But other U.K. royal trips to former British colonies showed the limits of such diplomacy. Occasional visits to Myanmar over the years by Princess Alexandra, Elizabeth’s cousin, and Princess Anne, her only daughter, failed to thaw frigid relations as the country spent much of its post-independence life under military dictatorship.
Ties have hit rock bottom this year. The latest military regime expelled Peter Vowles, the British ambassador designate, and jailed a former envoy, Vicky Bowman, and her husband, artist and former political prisoner Htein Lin, on immigration charges.
The British Royal Yacht Britannia is tugged to port in Bangkok in this May 9, 1997
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