Charlie Hebdo depicts Meghan Markle as George Floyd, Queen as white police officer

Controversial French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has sparked outrage yet again for its latest front page cover that showed a cartoon of UK's Queen Elizabeth kneeling on the neck of Meghan Markle, referring to the death of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.

The title of the cartoon published on Saturday reads, "Why Meghan left Buckingham", to which the Duchess of Sussex, pressed under the Queen’s knee replies, "because I couldn't breathe anymore".

The cartoon imitates the scene when George Floyd was killed after a White police officer pressed his knee against the 48-year-old man's neck for about nine minutes as he gasped for breath. The accused officer, Derek Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder by a US court. Floyd’s death sparked a wave of Black Lives Matter protests across America, calling for action against police brutality and racial injustice, which went a long way towards finally dislodging Donald Trump from the US President's office as matters became heavily polarised before the recent elections.

Meghan Markle accuses Royal family of racism

The cartoon comes days after Meghan Markle an interview with Oprah Winfrey, accused the British press and the royal family of racism. The biracial American actor said when she was pregnant with her son Archie, a member of the royal family expressed "concerns... about the colour of his skin". She also revealed that she felt so isolated and miserable as a working member of the royal family, that she had suicidal thoughts. 

The Buckingham Palace, in a statement, said Meghan's claims were "concerning" and would be investigated "privately." Earlier this week, Prince William defended the monarchy against the accusations, saying, "We're very much not a racist family".

The cartoon drew widespread controversy on social media, as many users called it offensive. Dr Halima Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust, a UK-based think-tank on racial equality, said the caricature was "wrong on every level". 

"This doesn't push boundaries, make anyone laugh or challenge racism. It demeans the issues and causes offence, across the board," she tweeted.

Charlie Hebdo is well known for being provocative on issues, pushing the frontiers of what's considered permissable as free speech. It has in the past been targeted and attacked by terrorist outfits, most notably the attack on its office in 2015 in which almost a dozen staff were killed. However, whereas in the previous cases the outrage was driven by alleged insult to divine figures, here, the news magazine has combined the George Floyd death incident with what is being touted as an unmasking of centuries of racism condoned by the British royal family. Racism was predominant in the Colonial era with examples of this still being felt across the world.