Photos show people meditating, not victims of Myanmar earthquake

Published on April 8, 2025 at 10:48
3 min read
By Sachin BAGHEL, AFP India

Old photos of a meditation exercise in Myanmar surfaced in social media posts that falsely claimed they depicted casualties of a magnitude 7.7 quake that struck the Southeast Asian country in late March, killing more than 3,000 people. The pictures taken at the meditation camp date back to at least 2019.

"The Buddhist circles are mourning the earthquake in Myanmar, Burma and Thailand. Buddhist devotees and monks are no longer among us. Heartfelt tributes," read a Hindi-language Facebook post sharing a set of three pictures on March 29, 2025.

Two of the photos showed monks lying flat on the ground, while a third showed people in civilian clothes in the same position.

State media in Myanmar said the death toll after the devastating March 28 quake has risen above 3,300, with many people in the country still without shelter because their homes were destroyed or fearing further collapse (archived link).

Screenshot of the false post, taken April 8, 2025

The same collage appeared alongside similar claims on X and Facebook.

Comments from users mourning the dead suggest they believed the photos showed victims of the disaster.

"Very sad news. An irreparable loss to the Buddhist community," a user commented.

Another user mourned the incident saying, "Heartfelt condolences to the deceased".

But the photos predate the earthquake and show a meditation exercise.

A reverse image search on Google found the photos shared separately on a Facebook page called Theinngu 32 with Burmese-language captions reading "lying meditation" (archived link).

According to a website linked in the page intro, it belongs to a Buddhist meditation centre headquartered in Myanmar (archived link).

The first photo of the row of monks lying on the ground was shared on January 27, 2020, the second on October 5, 2020 and the third of people in civilian clothing was posted on October 14, 2019 (archived links here, here and here).

Screenshot comparison of the images shared in false posts (left) and photos posted by the meditation centre (right)

An admin of the "Theinngu 32" Facebook page confirmed the photos were unrelated to the recent Myanmar quake.

"These photos show the lying meditation practice during a 10 day meditation camp organised in the past," they told AFP on April 2.

AFP has fact-checked misrepresented visuals linked to the Myanmar earthquake.

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