Myanmar authorities have arrested an astrologer for causing panic by predicting a new earthquake in a Tiktok viral video.
John Moe posted his prediction on April 9, just two weeks after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake killed 3,500 people and destroyed old-centuries in the Southeast Asian nation.
He was arrested Tuesday for having made “false statements with the intention of causing public panic,” said the Ministry of Information of Myanmar.
John Moe The had warned that an earthquake “hits every city from Myanmar” on April 21. But experts say that earthquakes are impossible to predict due to the complexity of the factors involved in such disasters.
In his video, which obtained more than three million views, John Moe urged people to “take important things with you and flee buildings during the tremors”.
“People should not stay in large buildings during the day,” read his legend.
A resident of Yangon told AFP that many of his neighbors believed in prediction. They refused to stay at home and camped outside the day John Moe said that the earthquake would occur.
His Tiktok account, now wholly, which has more than 300,000 subscribers, claims to make predictions based on astrology and the surley.
He was arrested during a raid on his house in Sagaing, in the center of Myanmar.
The Mandalay and Sagaing areas were particularly affected by the earthquake on March 28, which caused a rare demand for the Junta of Myanmar for foreign aid.
This earthquake felt about 1,000 km in Bangkok, where a building collapsed on a construction site, killing dozens.
