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| - Fact Check: Photo of boy sleeping between 2 graves goes viral again
Photographer Abdul Aziz al Otaibi had clicked these photos as a part of his art project in the year 2014.
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India Today Fact Check
Viral photo is from Saudi Arabia and is an art project of a photographer.
An image of a boy covered by a blanket purportedly sleeping between two graves is getting viral on social media. It is being claimed that the boy in the viral picture is from Syria who was lying between the graves of his parents.
India Today's Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the viral image is from Saudi Arabia. Photographer Abdul Aziz al Otaibi had clicked these photos as a part of his art project in the year 2014.
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
Facebook page "POWER THOUGHTS" shared the image with the caption that reads, "One of the most sad images of the world: A Syrian child sleeps between the graves of his mother and father." The photo is viral on Facebook.
To verify the claim with the viral image, we ran a reverse search. We found that the image is neither from Syria nor the piles of stones are actually graves. The photo was part of an art project by photographer Abdul Aziz al Otaibi. He clicked these images in Saudi Arabia back in 2014.
The image went viral with the same claim in the year 2014 also. At that time, Otaibi clarified through his interview. He said, "The picture has nothing to do with Syria, nor this child is an orphan. I wanted to show in pictures how the love of a child for his parents is irreplaceable. This love cannot be substituted by anything or anybody else, even if the parents are dead."
Otaibi said, "I went to the outskirts of Yanbu, 250 kilometre away from Jeddah. I build two piles from stones that looked like graves. I asked the son of my sister to lie in between these artificial graves and cover him with a blanket. Of course, I would never ever put a child between two real graves."
Otaibi had posted the pictures on his Facebook account. He also posted the picture of the boy smiling next to the graves and also published the backstage story of the photos. However, a few days later a Twitter handle @americanbadu posts the picture with the claim that the picture is from Syria. The tweet went viral within minutes.
Since then, this image went viral many times with the same claim. In 2014, Independent had fact-checked the image.
It is clear that the viral image is not from Syria, it is an art project of a photographer.
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