An old video from Thailand has recently gone viral on social media with a false claim that it shows a Uyghur Muslim being thrashed for offering namaz at a public place in China.
BOOM found that the video shows an incident from Thailand from 2020 when an employee of a debt company was beaten up by his senior for allegedly mishandling the customer's money.
The 21-second long video shows disturbing visuals of a man sitting on his knees and getting kicked by another man. The assaulter later, lifts the victim up from the ground and continues to attack him by kicking repeatedly on his face.
The video is being shared with a Hindi caption that translates to, "Prayers and religious practices are not allowed in public places in China. A Uyghur Muslim was brutally thrashed by a man from another community while offering namaz in a public place in China.)
(Original Text in Hindi: चीन में सार्वजनिक स्थानों पर नमाज़, और धार्मिक आचरण की अनुमति नहीं है। चीन में सार्वजनिक जगह पर नमाज़ अदा करते उइगुर मुस्लिम की क्रूरतापूर्वक दूसरे समुदाय के व्यक्ति द्वारा पिटाई की गई।)
Click here to view the post.
The clip is also doing rounds on Facebook making a similar false claim.
Click here to one such post.
The same video is viral with a caption in English saying, "In China, one Abdullah tried to offer Namaz in an institute, the teacher reminded him on seeing 72. Cheers In India, Muslims offer Namaz wherever they want, in temples, in trains, on roads, yet today Muslims are not safe in India, aren't they Jihadis? jokes."
Click here to view the post.
BOOM received the video on its helpline number (7700906588) for verification.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the keyframes from the viral video and found a tweet from September 20, 2022, carrying a screengrab from the viral video.
The Indonesian caption with the image mentioned that the incident took place in Thailand where the assault happened over a payment issue.
Click here to view the tweet.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a related keyword search and found a Thai news report published on December 4, 2020. The report states that the visuals show a senior employee of a company's debt collection group beating his subordinate and accusing him of cheating in front of other employees. The victim said that several such incidents in the past also took place related to the debt collection.
Another report by Daily News Thailand from December 2, 2020, about the incident also states that the incident occurred in Thailand in 2020 because the employee of a lending company got beaten for allegedly mishandling the customer's money.
Though, this video does not show torture on a Uyghur Muslim in China, we found several news articles reporting about the violence on the community in the country. Read one such report here.