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Meghan Markle and husband Prince Harry filed a lawsuit against British tabloid The Daily Mail after editors printed a letter she wrote to her father Thomas Markle.
–-Meghan Markle’s mother Doria Ragland runs 5K for a suicide prevention charity-
In a blistering letter, Prince Harry on Tuesday condemned the tabloid for participating in behavior that “destroys lives,” The Washington Post reports.
The Duchess of Sussex initiated the legal filing in London’s High Court against the newspaper, accusing the publication of “unlawfully” publishing her private letter that was written to her dad after her wedding and published Feb. 10.
Harry condemned The Daily Mail, charging that its editors are creating an environment that is putting his wife at the same risk and possible fate as his mother who was relentlessly pursued by the paparazzi and died in a fatal car crash in 1997.
Harry said Meghan had become “one of the latest victims” of the publication, which “wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences.”
Prince Harry said his “deepest fear is history repeating itself.”
“I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”
Harry described the Daily Mail’s actions as “bullying” and a “ruthless campaign.”
“There comes a point when the only thing to do is to stand up to this behavior because it destroys people and destroys lives. Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people. We all know this isn’t acceptable, at any level. We won’t and can’t believe in a world where there is no accountability for this,” he said.
Harry and Meghan contend that publishing the letter “unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner to manipulate you, the reader, and further the divisive agenda of the media group in question.”
“In addition to their unlawful publication of this private document, they purposely misled you by strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year,” Harry said.
Harry said there is a “human cost to this relentless propaganda, specifically when it is knowingly false and malicious, and though we have continued to put on a brave face — as so many of you can relate to — I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been.”
Harry and Meghan have been touring southern Africa despite the bombshell lawsuit they are continuing their days of engagement.
–Jessye Norman, international opera star, dead at 74–
And the “positive” news coverage on their tour, he said, highlights the “double standards of this specific press pack that has vilified her almost daily for the past nine months; they have been able to create lie after lie at her expense simply because she has not been visible while on maternity leave.”
“She is the same woman she was a year ago on our wedding day, just as she is the same woman you’ve seen on this Africa tour,” he said.
He slammed the media saying “for select media this is a game, and one that we have been unwilling to play from the start. I have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long.”