Misinformation about the attacker’s identity – as a Muslim or a Jew – spread widely online before police identified the suspect.
Australians are mourning the deaths of five women and a “courageous” Pakistani security guard killed in a knife attack at a Sydney shopping center.
Police said on Sunday they had not yet revealed the motives or ideology behind the attacks in Sydney’s Bondi Junction, but were investigating whether the killer specifically targeted women.
Misinformation speculating about the attacker’s identity as Muslim or Jewish spread widely online before police identified the suspected killer – Joel Cauchi, a white Christian and Australian citizen who was the seventh person killed in the attack .
The 40-year-old suspect from Queensland was killed at the scene by a police officer who shot him after he allegedly confronted her with a knife, police said.
The five women he allegedly killed included Ashlee Good, whose nine-month-old baby was taken to the hospital with stab wounds.
Good’s family described her as an “all-round outstanding human being” and said in a statement on Sunday that they were still “devastated by the terrible loss.”
Her family also thanked two men who “held and cared for our baby when Ashlee couldn’t,” and said the nine-month-old was “currently doing well” after hours of surgery.
Faraz Tahir, 30, a security guard who recently moved to Australia after fleeing persecution in Pakistan, was also killed in the attack “while defending others,” the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Australia said in a statement.
The statement said Tahir was a “valued member” of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, “known for his devotion and kindness”, who came to Australia to seek refuge about a year ago.
Eleven other people were also taken to hospital with stab wounds, including nine women and two men, local police said.
New South Wales (NSW) Police Commissioner Karen Webb told reporters on Sunday that the higher number of victims in the attack was part of her investigation.
“False claims and rumors”
Speculation that the “perpetrator was a Muslim or Palestinian” emerged within minutes and led to “anti-Muslim hatred” in the comment threads of leading Australian media outlets, the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN) said on Sunday.
On another News Corp website, an article with the headline “Was this a terrorist attack?” remained online. Question the whole of Australia is asking” on Sunday evening.
A “story has emerged that the perpetrator was another person with a Jewish name, which is also false,” AMAN said, adding that “our thoughts are with the families of the victims and the baby who lost his mother has”.
Sarah Schwartz of the Jewish Council of Australia said “right-wing Islamophobic groups” had “[exploited] this tragedy to further their hateful agenda.”
“We must not allow this tragedy to be exploited for political purposes or to incite Islamophobia or anti-Semitism,” she said.
Cameron Wilson, a reporter for Australian news outlet Crikey, said that social media platform
“It is appalling that people preemptively and baselessly blamed immigration for the Bondi Junction attack, yet one of the victims was a refugee guard who died in the service of others,” Wilson said in a post on social media.
It was the deadliest attack in Australia since the deaths of six people in December 2022, which police months later attributed to “Christian extremist ideology.” Webb told reporters that police had ruled out links to Christian activism in Saturday’s attack.
While there have been fewer mass shootings since Australia introduced strict gun laws following the Port Arthur mass shooting in 1996, about five years ago an Australian attacker killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch in one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern history.
The number of women killed by men in Australia has been the subject of widespread protests in recent months and years. Activist group Counting Dead Women said the five women murdered on Saturday brought the total number of Australian women killed so far in 2024 to 23.