AAP FactCheck - An Australian TV reporter's shooting with a rubber bullet by US police seems to have sparked the resharing of a false claim about protester injuries during anti-lockdown demonstrations in Melbourne in 2021.
The photos posted alongside the claim show injuries suffered by people in overseas protests that preceded the Melbourne demonstrations and were not related to COVID-19 restrictions.
An X post1 shared on June 11, 2025, says "The people who hid this now want your empathy", apparently referring to police shooting Nine News correspondent Lauren Tomasi with a rubber bullet while she was recording a piece to camera at protests against immigration raids in LA days earlier.
"Press [heart emoji] if you have zero sympathy for the mass media," the caption said.
The X post features a composite image showing three different people displaying rubber bullet wounds — a man with back injuries, a woman showing a deep wound in her side, and another younger woman who had been hit in the forehead.
"Rubber bullets used on freedom protestors (sic) in Melbourne, Australia by the police," overlay text says.
One reply to the post2 shared a screengrab of an X post by Ms Tomasi in July 2021.
"I must say, these accused 'protestors' are very meek and mild in their hand cuffs today. No screaming about fake news and fake viruses today, folks," the reporter wrote at the time.
The graphic in the main X post has also been shared on Facebook3.
"While everyone is outraged by what happened to an Australian journalist, here's what happened here in Australia to protesters who were actually peaceful and unarmed," the caption says.
But a reverse image search reveals that none of the images show injuries suffered by protesters in Melbourne in September 2021, where police fired pepper balls and pellets to break up the crowd.
The first photo of the man with back injuries was taken after a protest in Argentina on December 22, 2015, according to an X post4.
The claim that the photo showed a protester from Melbourne in 2021 was also debunked by AFP Fact Check5.
It found the photo was taken by an Associated Press photographer during a march by poultry company workers who blocked a highway leading to Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires on December 22, 2015.
The second image of the woman with a rubber bullet wound is from a US protest on August 21, 2014, according to an article in the Church Times6.
The woman is Renita Lamkin, an African Methodist Episcopal Church pastor, who attended a protest against the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer on August 9, 2014.
The pastor said she was attempting to mediate between police and protesters when a rubber bullet struck her, HuffPost reported7.
The image of a young woman with a wound to her forehead is also from the US, and it was posted on Twitter 8on May 30, 2020, more than a year before the Melbourne protests took place in September 2021.
The user @shannynsharyse's caption said she had been hit by a rubber bullet while protesting.
Celebrity Kim Kardashian offered to pay for the woman's medical bills after seeing the images, The U.S. Sun reported9, and it's believed she was shot by police during a Black Lives Matter protest in Minneapolis.
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