No Muslim or asylum-seeker was involved in the Southport incident as claimed by the far-right
UK authorities have identified a suspect in a stabbing attack that killed three young girls and wounded several other children, confirming that the identification used by Islamophobic groups as fuel for anti-Muslim riots was fake.
Local media identified the suspect as 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, UK-born to Rwandan parents. The local media added that the suspect’s family is “heavily involved with the local church; It was far-right groups who orchestrated the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots, even while mobs also clashed with police outside a mosque—the first of several violent riots across the country—in response to those claims.
By the time a judge said the teen suspect could be identified, rumors were already rife and far-right influencers had pinned the blame on immigrants and Muslims. “There’s a parallel universe where what was claimed by these rumors were the facts of the case,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future. This think tank looks at issues including integration and national identity. “And that will be a difficult thing to manage.”
The 17-year-old suspect was not named initially due to rules regarding children charged with crimes, before a judge then ruled that the media could name him as Axel Rudakubana. He turns 18 next week, and the police have said he was born in Cardiff. Storm of Misinformation
A claim that the suspect was an asylum seeker or immigrant has been viewed at least 15.7 million times across X, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms, a Reuters news agency analysis showed. A false claim he was an undocumented migrant and a Muslim who arrived in a small boat appeared on the website “Channel 3 Now”, which later apologized for publishing misinformation that led to the violent riots.
Internet personality Andrew Tate posted a photo on Tuesday of a man he identified as being behind the attack, labeling the picture “straight off the boat,” but that was wrong, too. That photo was of a 51-year-old man who had been arrested for a different stabbing in Ireland last year.
An analysis by Channel 4, however, indicated that 49 percent of the traffic on social media platform X using the hashtag ‘Southport Muslim’-another unevidenced claim about the attacker’s religion-came from the United States, while 30 percent was from Britain itself.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a stern warning to social media companies in light of this: they must do more under laws barring online incitement to violence.
He said the disturbances were not legitimate protests, adding it was criminal disorder that was “clearly driven by far-right hatred”, before adding a warning to tech companies.
“Let me also say to large social media companies, and those who run them, violent disorder whipped up online: that is also a crime. That is happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere,” he said at a news conference. He added there was a “balance to be struck” in dealing with such sites.
