Protests escalate: How rights use a death for their own benefit

The trigger was a case that is currently shaking the whole of Great Britain. “I can’t breathe,” 18-year-old Henry Nowak can be heard saying in the video recordings from December 2025. They show the moment when police officers handcuff the student in a residential area in Southampton. 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa, who stands next to the police officers in the video, had previously falsely claimed that Nowak had racially attacked him. Digwa is a member of the Indian Sikh community. When Nowak explains that he was actually stabbed by Digwa, the officers don’t take it seriously: “I don’t think so, my friend,” one of the police officers replies.

Shortly afterwards, Nowak died from his stab wounds. Digwa had stabbed him several times in the legs and heart with a 21 centimeter long blade.

perpetrator convicted

This week Digwa was sentenced to life imprisonment. The case is actually closed, but right-wing activists are now using it for their own purposes. “Enough with the prejudice against white people,” said Reform UK leader Nigel Farage in a Facebook video. He wants to see the individual case as a piece of the puzzle in a larger structure: the police are so afraid of appearing racist that they decide against white people on principle.

Henry’s family had also expressed criticism: “Henry should not have died in police custody on the streets of Southampton,” said father Mark Nowak after the guilty verdict. Henry repeated nine times that he couldn’t breathe. Four times that he was stabbed. The treatment of the police officers is inhumane, degrading and unbearable. And yet: His criticism concerns the police officers on duty that night. Not the police force in its entirety.

Hampshire Police publicly apologized following the verdict.

300 demonstrators

But Nigel Farage – his party is currently leading in the polls – called on the population in his video to react with “pure, ice-cold anger”.

Around 300 demonstrators gathered in front of the Southampton police station on Tuesday evening. Led by right-wing extremist activist Tommy Robinson, who led thousands of Brits in a “Unite the Kingdom” rally through London in mid-May. Instead of “fighting for Britain,” he now called for “justice for Henry.”

Tuesday’s scenes not only brought back memories of the start of England’s anti-immigration riots in the summer of 2024, but provide a surreal contrast to the Black Lives Matter marches in America.

46-year-old George Floyd was brutally arrested in Minnesota in March 2021 for an alleged counterfeit money payment and died on the street – after repeatedly letting it be known that he couldn’t breathe. As a result, millions of Americans took to the streets for “Justice for George.”

“White lives matter just as much as black lives,” Farage says in his Facebook video.

Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood strongly condemned the riots, as did Prime Minister Keir Starmer: There is “no justification,” she wrote on