WHAT WAS CLAIMED
A photo shows a Perth memorial event for Henry Nowak, who was murdered in the UK.
OUR VERDICT
False. The image is AI generated.
AAP FACTCHECK - An image of a Perth memorial for an 18-year-old whose murder sparked violent protests is an AI-generated fake.
British teenager Henry Nowak was killed by a man with a Sikh ceremonial dagger in Southampton, England, in December 2025.
Police who attended the scene have been criticised for handcuffing the dying teenager after his attacker, Vickrum Digwa, falsely claimed he had been racially abused and had acted in self-defence, the BBC reported.
It has led to criticism in the UK of "two-tier" policing, and a protest in Southampton on June 2 turned violent, with 11 police officers injured and several demonstrators arrested.
In the days that followed the protest, an image spread across social media, purporting to show people in Perth, Australia, staging a memorial.
"WOW: Hundreds gather in Scarborough, Perth, Australia, to honour murdered British teen Henry Nowak," one X post reads, showing hundreds of people gathered at the community's beachfront amphitheatre.
"They take the knee in tribute and proudly wave British flags high. Australian patriots stand strong with Henry Nowak."
"The West is uniting against two-tiered anti-white injustice!" another Facebook post reads.
However, the image is AI-generated, and there are no reports of any such memorial event in Scarborough.
The image contains an invisible AI watermark, called Synth ID, which can be identified by an OpenAI verification tool.
The image also contains visual inconsistencies that indicate it is not genuine.
A man in a green t-shirt kneeling in the foreground appears to be wearing jeans cut off at the knee on one leg and has a square-shaped shadow that doesn't match his body position.
A man in the red cap, to the right of the image, also appears to have two right arms.
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