The parents of a seven-year-old girl fatally stabbed in a Greater Manchester park have issued a plea against her image being used as part of counter-protests to the Black Lives Matter movement, saying it is causing them “huge distress”. Far-right groups have been using photographs of Emily Jones as part of the “All Lives Matter” meme, claiming that her killing has been ignored by the media because she was white. A woman was arrested at the scene of Emily’s killing on 22 March 2020 – Mother’s Day – in Queen’s Park, Bolton. Eltiona Skana was subsequently charged with the murder and possession of a bladed article. The 30-year-old is being detained under the Mental Health Act and will next appear in court on 15 September. The lack of updates on her case in the interim has led some groups to suggest there is a racially motivated conspiracy of silence around Emily’s killing, comparing it with the coverage of the death of George Floyd in the US. But under rules to protect the right to a fair trial, media organisations cannot publish anything that could prejudice Skana’s case. On Wednesday Emily’s parents, Sarah and Mark, released a statement saying: “We are aware that many people are using the picture we released of our daughter Emily, when we publicly paid tribute to her following the worst day of our lives, as part of recent protests and campaigns. “Today we kindly ask the public to stop using the picture of our Emily from one of her days at school. We hold this picture dear to our hearts and to see it being used in this way is incredibly upsetting – Emily loved everything and everyone, regardless of their race, gender or beliefs. As we’ve said before, she was beautiful inside and out and had a heart as big as her smile. “We can’t thank people enough for the support we have received as we continue to live through the nightmare that is life without Emily, but we’re still grieving over the loss of our beautiful daughter and seeing her picture being used as part of recent protests is causing us huge distress. “A woman has been charged with the murder of our daughter and we want to ensure that we respect the legal process and ask people not to speculate over the circumstances surrounding her death.” Last month the editor of the Bolton News explained why his newspaper had not named Skana before she was charged. Posting on Twitter, Karl Holbrook said: “For the conspiracy theorists who’ve kindly emailed me with their crazed theories about why we hadn’t named the alleged murderer since the tragic death of Emily Jones in Bolton on Mother’s Day. We hadn’t named her because she hadn’t been charged. “Now she has, so we have. In accordance with the law and so we don’t do anything that could possibly stand in the way of this heartbroken family getting justice for their daughter. Shame on anyone who didn’t do this.”