A photo of a monk suffering from a genetic disorder is being shared with a false narrative - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 30, 2023
A photo of a person with abnormal tumours on his skin is being shared on social media with a claim that Allah cursed the man seen in the photo for his acts of atrocities against Muslims in Burma. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The man with tumours on his skin was cursed by Allah for his atrocious acts against Muslims in Burma (Myanmar).
Fact: The old man seen in this photo is a Buddhist monk from Thailand named Sam-Ang. He suffers from a genetic disorder known as Neurofibromatosis. He is not from Myanmar, as being claimed. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To learn more details about the viral photo and verify the claim’s veracity, we performed a reverse image search leading us to a few articles (here and here) regarding the person. These were written in Thai.
According to these reports, the man seen in the photo is a Buddhist monk named Sam-Ang Sujitto, who was affected by a rare genetic disease called Neurofibromatosis (here and here). According to an article published on Sanook, a Thai website, he was affected by this disease at the age of 40.
Furthermore, we discovered that the same photo with a similar claim went viral in 2017. It was debunked by MAFINDO, an Indonesian anti-hoax community. With all this evidence, it is clear that a photo of a Thai monk suffering from Neurofibromatosis is being shared with a fake story.
To sum up, the man seen in this photo is a Thai monk, not a Myanmar monk responsible for atrocities against Muslims.