King Charles to receive high chief title in Samoa
British monarch visiting Pacific island nation for Commonwealth summit
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King Charles and Queen Camilla have left Australia for Samoa where the British monarch will address a Commonwealth summit and be given the title of high chief.
The couple are expected to be greeted by hundreds of people in the Pacific island nation which is holding its first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in capital Apia this week.
Preparations for the summit and the royal trip have been going on for months. Hotels have been renovated and roads and streets where the couple is expected to visit have been spruced up.
A highlight of the visit will be the king receiving the title of Toa’iga o Tumua, or paramount chief, and taking a walk in a mangrove reserve to see the impact of climate change on Pacific nations and their communities.
“The king tide today is about twice it was 20, 30 years ago, and that is affecting our land and it’s eating away at some of the areas that are so hard for us to control,” Lenatai Victor Tamapua, a Samoan chief and member of parliament, said. “People have to move inwards, inland now”.
The biennial Commonwealth summit will be dominated by debates over climate change and calls for the UK and other wealthy nations to pay billions in reparations for their historical contributions to the crisis.
As many as 56 world leaders are expected at the summit where former British colonies will continue to ask questions about the relevance and modern profile of the Commonwealth.
To ensure the safety of the world leaders and around 3,000 delegates at the summit, the Samoan authorities are offering $36 in grocery vouchers to gun owners if they surrender their firearms.
Charles taking the title of high chief in Samoa will be in stark contrast to the protests and accusations of stealing Aboriginal land and committing “genocide against our people” that he had faced during his five-day tour of Australia. The king was heckled on Monday by Aboriginal senator Lidia Thorpe, a staunch critic of the monarchy and a campaigner for Indigenous people’s rights.
The Australia tour was the king’s first to an overseas realm and the first major foreign trip since he was diagnosed with cancer. It was also the first visit by a British monarch to Australia in 13 years.
The British monarch acts as the head of state in Australia, New Zealand and 12 other Commonwealth territories outside the UK, although the role is largely ceremonial.
More than half of the Commonwealth’s members are small states, many of them Pacific island nations facing the threat of rising sea levels.
The summit in Samoa is expected to make a declaration on protecting the ocean and take up climate change as a critical topic for discussion.
Britain has said it will not bring the issue of reparations for historical transatlantic slavery, demanded by Caribbean countries, to the table at the summit but is open to engage with leaders who want to discuss it.
The monarch is set to be joined at the summit by prime minister Keir Starmer.
Additional reporting by agencies.
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