Political and religious leaders in Northern Ireland saw early Wednesday morning — with the embers of a long night of violence in Belfast and other parts of the region still smoldering — that their calls for calm had fallen on deaf ears. Cars, buses, phone booths, and trash cans set ablaze. Homes where immigrants — or simply people from ethnic minorities — were believed to live, completely engulfed in flames after violent groups targeted them as places that needed to be “liberated.”

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Crowds gather at sites across Belfast after Sudanese man charged with attempted murder

• Full report: Man seriously injured in Belfast stabbing Starmer describes as ‘sickening’

Badenoch said, after the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it was right that people wanted to ensure this did not happen again.

It led to the Macpherson report, she said.

[It] wanted to put right what went wrong with policing in the 1990s.

However, in attempting to do so, it also enshrined a principle which I believe is wrong that a racist incident is racist if it is perceived as racist by the victim or any other person.

Equality law, properly designed, should protect us all in the same way. It should be a shield, not a sword.

It should protect people from discrimination. It should protect people from being treated differently because of their race, sex, religion, sexuality, disability or age.

This blog is now closed. Read our main report here: Police use water cannon against rioters in Northern Ireland

Hadi Alodid refused legal representation and made no reply to charges which were put put to him through an Arabic interpreter as he appeared in court charged with attempted murder following the Belfast knife attack, the Press Association reports.

The 30-year-old, with an address at Duncairn Avenue in Belfast, appeared before the city’s magistrates’ court on Wednesday morning.

He is charged with the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie on Monday, with threatening to kill an NHS radiographer on the same day and with the possession of a knife.

LONDON, June 2 — UK police released footage of a dying student falsely accused of racially abusing a Sikh man who stabbed him, sparking anger today from far-right leader Nigel Farage over police diversity policies.

Farage called for an end to “anti-white prejudice” and recognition that “white lives matter”.

Body camera footage released by police showed mortally wounded university student Henry Nowak, 18, being handcuffed by police.

A judge oyesterday jailed his killer, 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, for at least 21 years for stabbing Nowak to death and lying to police that the student had racially insulted him.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “awful, shocking case” on X, saying it was right the independent police complaints watchdog was investigating officers’ “response to (Nowak’s) senseless murder”.

Farage, whose anti-immigration Reform UK party made major gains in local elections across England last month, said the case showed the principle of everybody being “judged equally before the law” had been “trashed and thrown away”.

The footage captures police accepting the aggressor’s accusation that he and not Nowak was the victim during the incident in the southern city of Southampton in December.

Nowak is placed in handcuffs despite telling officers he has been stabbed and repeatedly adding “I can’t breathe”.

The officer can be heard asking Nowak: “You’ve been stabbed, whereabouts?” before adding: “Don’t think you have, mate.”

Farage praised the “dignity” of the teenager’s family after the sentencing hearing but added: “I suggest the rest of us respond to this with pure cold rage. This is wrong.”

Change was needed, he said, “if our society is not to be ripped apart” amid distrust between communities, and concern over policing and institutions.

“We need a change in culture, enough of anti-white prejudice,” he said, calling for “a promotion of the idea that white lives matter just as much as black lives”.

“An end to DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) and positive discrimination, but a country that treats everybody equally and fairly before the law,” he added.

American tech billionaire Elon Musk has posted on X an offer to fund a private prosecution against the police over its handling of the murder.

Digwa was due in court in Southampton again Tuesday with his brother, Gurpreet Digwa, and a third defendant, Moga Singh, on weapons offences.

Nowak was stabbed with a ceremonial knife with a 21cm (8 inch) blade.

Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, will be sentenced on July 17 for assisting an offender by taking the knife back to the family home. — AFP

It was extreme even for a figure like Nigel Farage. Hours after the police footage of officers handcuffing Henry Nowak on the fatal night of December 3 in Southampton became public and spread like wildfire on social media, the Reform UK leader called on citizens to respond with “pure, cold rage.” The young Nowak had been fatally stabbed by a man of Sikh faith and Asian descent, who later falsely accused him of a racist attack. “I can’t breathe,” the victim shouted up to nine times, to the officers’ disbelief as they moved against him. His cry of agony echoed the words George Floyd uttered on the streets of Minneapolis, which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.

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