Jill Lawless
London: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office has condemned comments by US Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the death of a university student who was handcuffed as he lay dying from a stab wound.
Henry Nowak, 18, died last December after being stabbed by Vickrum Digwa in Southampton on the south coast of England. Digwa, 23, was convicted of murder for stabbing Nowak with a 21-centimetre Sikh dagger and sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term.
The case has been seized on by anti-immigration activists and politicians, despite the fact that both Nowak and his killer were British.
Digwa, who is Sikh, falsely claimed to the police that he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak, who was white. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded man as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.
On Tuesday, police in Southampton were pelted with chairs, cans, rocks and flares after a demonstration over Nowak’s death attended by far-right figures and others.
Vance said in a post on social platform X on Friday that there should be “righteous anger” in response to the murder, which he blamed in part on “the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it”.
In a statement issued on Friday (UK time) in response to Vance’s comments, Starmer’s office criticised people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets”.
“The Nowak family are grieving after Henry’s horrific murder. They have said they do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We should be respecting their wishes,” Downing Street said in a statement.
“Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country.”
Ed Davey, leader of the centrist opposition Liberal Democrats, said: “We all need to resist attempts like this to politicise Henry Nowak’s death and divide our country – whether they come from MAGA politicians like Vance or their cronies here in the UK.”
Starmer has previously said that police had serious questions to answer about their handling of the incident, including how accusations of racism informed police thinking, and an investigation is taking place.
But he condemned the violent and disorderly protest that took place on Tuesday night and said it was “unforgivable” to exploit the death to stir tension after populist Reform UK Party leader Nigel Farage called for people to respond with “pure cold rage”.
Starmer also told Elon Musk to stop interfering in British politics on Thursday after the tech boss repeatedly posted about the case and said it showed that police were biased against white people in Britain.
The local police force has rejected accusations of any bias, but police chiefs have said they would review guidelines on how officers should treat ethnicities differently that were drawn up in response to decades of well-documented incidents of racism in policing.
But Farage said in parliament this week that British police were guilty of “two-tier” policing, with a bias against white people, an intervention that drew sustained jeers from many MPs and a rejection by Starmer.
Farage warned separately that protests in response to the Nowak case were the beginning of “wider unrest”.
The British government has rejected the two-tier allegation, which is not backed by statistical evidence. “I don’t recognise, as I’ve said, this caricature of Britain having a two-tier criminal justice system,” Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy told Sky News on Friday.
“I think the vast majority of the public don’t recognise that.”
The US State Department echoed the two-tier policing claim in a post on X on Thursday, expressing condolences to Nowak’s family and saying that “ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilisational decline”.
Britain’s Independent Office for Police Conduct, which investigates allegations of police wrongdoing, is probing the actions of police officers responding to Nowak’s stabbing.
The victim’s father, Mark Nowak, has said the case was not about racism or religion, and that he wanted his son’s death to lead to safer streets and not to be used to create “further division, hatred or tension”.
Relations between the United States and Britain – historically close allies – have publicly deteriorated since the US-Israeli war with Iran began in February, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly mocking Starmer for failing to provide greater support.
Vance has previously accused European leaders of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration.
AP
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