Video from Thailand shared as 'man being assaulted for publicly offering namaz'

By: Ishita Goel
June 28 2023

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(Trigger warning: Mentions violence)

Context

A video of a man being assaulted is doing the rounds on social media with the claim that he was beaten up for offering namaz (an Islamic prayer) in public. In the video, the victim is sitting on his knees before a man starts hitting him. They are both in an indoor setting where other people can be seen sitting around a big table in the background. Several users shared the video with the claim that the assaulted man is an Uyghur Muslim. While many posts claimed the incident was from China, some linked it to India. A tweet read, "Prayers and religious practices are not allowed in public places in China. An Uyghur #Muslim was brutally thrashed by a man from another community while offering #Namaz in a public place in China." Another said that the video showed an Uyghur Muslim being beaten in India as punishment for offering namaz in a public place.

However, the video is from Thailand and has no communal angle.

In Fact

On reverse image search, we found the viral video is from 2020. ‘Ruang lao chao nee’ or ‘Stories for this morning’, a morning news show aired by Channel 3— a Thai free-to-air television network, had posted the same video on its YouTube channel(@MorningNewsTV3) on December 3, 2020. The video title roughly translates to: "Man joins debt collection gang. Thrashed for failing to recover money from his customers, put on bed rest for 3 days." According to the video description, the incident is from Mueang Samut Sakhon, the capital district of Samut Sakhon province in central Thailand. It further said that an employee of a ‘debt collection company’ was assaulted for not being able to recover dues from customers.

It further said that the victim admitted that he was aware that the company provides instant loans by distributing business cards at various places, and employees like him were required to collect the owed amount with interest from customers. The incident reportedly took place in January 2020 when the victim could not recover the dues from a customer. He secretly deposited another customer's money into the required account. However, his employer figured out the discrepancy and beat him up, as captured in the viral video. The description also said that the victim suffered severe physical trauma and was bedridden for three days but did file a police complaint out of fear. 

Matichon, a Thai-language national daily newspaper, had also reported on the incident on November 30, 2020, and published the same viral video with the report. We also found another report on the incident by Daily News (Thailand). The report included a screengrab from the video and stated that the Royal Thai Police had investigated the origin of the video. The report said that the police had learned that the video was taken in the office of a company called T.M.N. Group Co., Ltd. 

The Verdict

The viral video shows a man being assaulted by his employers for alleged embezzlement of funds. It does not show a man being punished for publicly offering namaz in China or India. Therefore, we mark the claim false.