FACT CHECK: No, this is not the image of Hapless Italian PM crying while addressing the nation.

Italy is facing one of the worst cases of Coronavirus infection in the world. Italy has surpassed China by number of deaths - more than 50,000 people have contracted with covid-19 and nearly 5,000 people died from the pandemic according to WHO.

In his context, news about Italian officials were also popular on social network including a photo showing hapless Italian Prime Minister sobbing at the state of affairs in his country hit adversely by the pandemic.

A Facebook profile called “Khin Zin Htay” shared the following image in a Facebook group with caption in Burmese saying “မျှော်လင့်ချက်မဲ့နေသည့် အီတလီဝန်ကြီးချုပ် မိန့်ခွန်းပြောရင်း ငိုကြွေး”- translated into English as “The hapless Italian Prime Minister wailed while addressing the nation”

Another Facebook account “Shwe Bu” also shared the same narrative referring to Johnny Sleek's tweet on Twitter.

A Twitter user known as “Euginearinda” claiming the same can be found below.

However, what these folks got wrong here in this post is that the man crying in the image is not the President of Italy but the President of Brazil. Let’s check the facts behind the image.

Fact Check

When we performed Yandex Reverse Image Search, the photo claimed as the Italian Prime Minister and we found that the man is not the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, but Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Google searches using key words "italian prime minister", and clicked on news tab also gives us a fair amount of fact check on the photo done by different organizations. Below are some of the links which we came across.

We also found an article from poder360, a Brazilian news site reporting the incident that took place on December 17, 2019 using the same photo. Using Google translate, we translated the article from Portuguese to English and we found that the Brazilian president had shed tears while recounting his own stabbing incident during his 2018 election campaign.

The video of the incident in which President Bolsonaro got emotional while recounting his experience of getting stabbed while campaigning can be seen in the video given below.

Conclusion

The image shared claiming to be of Italian Prime Minister bursting into tears while addressing the nation as haplessly overlooks the wreckage caused by COVID-19 in his country is actually of Brazilian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro. In an event held last year in Brazil, Bolsonaro broke down in the middle of his speech as he recounted his stabbing experience during presidential campaigning. The image was taken from this event.

Title:FACT CHECK: No, this is not the image of Hapless Italian PM crying while addressing the nation.

Fact Check By: Zaw Wai

Result: False