Bill and Melinda Gates have been targeted by anti-vaxxers for a long time for his work on vaccination. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated funds to GAVI Foundation, an organisation in the forefront of making vaccination available to countries who can’t afford it for its population.
Recently a video which claims to show that the Italian Government is calling for Bill Gates’ arrest is being circulated on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Any Italians out there ?? Are they really calling for the arrest of Bill Gates in Italy? https://t.co/67mhRzJKOE
— Sandra Schulze (@sandraschulze) May 16, 2020
Further, a blog by an organization called Live News 24 makes similar claims.
The blog is titled ‘Italian Parliamentarian Calls For The Arrest of Bill Gates’
‘Sara Cunial who is a member of the Italian Parliament has delivered a controversial speech where she is calling for the arrest of Bill Gates. Her speech was recorded and the video was later loaded on Youtube and is making rounds on social platforms,’ reads the article.
Sara Cunial is an Italian politician and the Member of Parliament for Rome.
”Dear President Conte,’ Cunial said in her speech, ‘next time you receive a phone call from the ‘philanthropist’ Bill Gates, forward it directly to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity,’ Cunial is heard saying in her speech.
Claim:
Italy is calling for Bill Gates’ arrest.
Fact Check:
The claim is misleading.
The Blog Post
The headline of the blog post appears to be an exaggeration because the first line of the blog clearly states that Sara Cunial delivered a controversial speech in which she called for the arrest of Bill Gates.
Although the viral video is genuine and does show an Italian politician calling for Gates’ arrest, it does not mean that the entire Italian government called for action against him.
A single member of the Italian Parliament making a claim does not automatically signify that her speech was supported by the entire Italian Parliament.
Further, the post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to debunk false news and misinformation on its News Feed.
Sara Cunial And Her Speech
According to a report by PolitiFact, Cunial had criticized mass media in speech.
She also stated inaccurate claims about Gates. These included misinformation like he used vaccines to sterilize millions of women in Africa and he had said that only a genocide could save the world.
Cunial is a member of Italy’s Five Star Movement, a political party that has earlier been blamed for an increase in the number of cases of measles in Italy after campaigning for an anti-vaccination agenda.
Reportedly, Cunial was suspended from the party in 2018 for a brief period of time after likening vaccines to ‘free genocide’ in a Facebook post. She was also fined in April 2020 when she violated the country’s shelter-in-place policies to visit a beach.
It is noteworthy to mention that Cunial’s speech was interrupted by objections from other members of parliament.
This suggests that her appeal for Gates’ arrest did not find wide support in the Italian government.
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