Police arrested four operatives of an outlawed group in the suburbs of Peshawar last month, when they were distributing handbills against polio vaccination.
“They were instigating people against polio vaccination and the state of Pakistan, and were inviting them to join an outlawed network,” said a press release by the Special Police Unit of Peshawar. The men were carrying 56 pamphlets at the time of their arrest, and had given some of them out to people in the Malazai village near the provincial capital.
Written by one Kainat Fatima in Urdu, the handbill says the anti-polio campaign is “a secret plan for Muslims genocide”.
“There are solid proofs of toxic ingredients in polio vaccines,” it says, citing ‘medical science’. “Polio drops disturb the hormone system, leading to impotency or abnormality.” Female children of the vaccinated girls will “lack femininity”, according to the pamphlet, and male children of the vaccinated boys will “lack masculinity”.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in world that have failed to control the crippling disease after Nigeria was declared polio-free in September 2015. According toEnd Polio Pakistan, five children have been tested positive with polio viruses in the country in 2016 so far. Three of these cases were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On February 26, seven-month-old Naureen of Kohat, and 21-month-old Jareer Waliullah of Peshawar, were found to be infected with the virus. Another child was tested positive in Nowshera in the same month. The other two children, one in Karachi and another in Quetta, are also from Pashtun families.
The family of one of this year’s polio victims in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was conservative and religious, and had declined to get him vaccinated. “After the child was affected by the virus, his father started vaccinating him, but in vain,” said a health official in Peshawar.
“Hate campaigns, ignorance, incredulity and attacks on polio vaccinators and their guards are the main reasons why Pakistan has failed to control the disease,” said Peshawar-based journalist Zawar Khan, who covers health related issues.
Jamaatul Ahrar, a splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, issued a 16-page edict on March 5. Titled “Polio: treatment or disease?”, the document argues that polio is not a leading cause of deaths in Pakistan and therefore not a significant issue. “To ignore the other critical diseases and to focus only on the less-fatal polio creates suspicions,” it argues.
“We are not against the concept of vaccination, and in certain cases we agree that vaccines can save lives. But we are against those who are running these programs,” the edict says, alleging that the Rotary Foundations is run by a freemason, and Bill Gates wants to reduce the world population. It also cites the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in 2011 to argue that the vaccination campaigns are in fact designed to “collect information for the CIA in Pakistan”.
The primary concern in Pakistan is not polio, it concludes, but the implementation of Sharia law in the country. “If we feel need to vaccinate children, we will manufacture our own polio vaccine and will run the anti-polio campaign under our own supervision. Until then, we impose a prohibition on polio vaccination and will punish the violators.”
A seven-minute video produced in line with the edict shows a militant who walks with the limp. The boy named Tauqeer caught poliovirus because of the vaccine, the message claims, and the drops can also cause HIV AIDS in humans.
This is not the first such instance of propaganda. In April last year, a video showed a burqa-clad woman claiming to be a doctor speaking against anti-polio programs in Pakistan. “The Pharaoh killed innocent children openly, but these worshipers of money are killing your children with poisonous vaccines under a secret plan.”
After a doctor named Shakeel Afridi was arrested for helping the CIA trace Osama Bin Laden with a fake polio vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, the group of Taliban led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan, and Mullah Nazir’s faction of Taliban in South Waziristan, banned polio vaccination in the areas under their control.
Since December 2012, at least 70 polio vaccinators and their guards have been killed and several others injured in various parts of the country. For almost two years, no militant groups claimed responsibility for such attacks. But on November 24, 2014, Jamaatul Ahrar took credit for an attack on an anti-polio team in Shabqadar. “We will soon release our policy statement on the polio vaccine,” its spokesman Ehsanullah Ehasan said. “We will show how it is hazardous to health according to science, and how it is against the teachings of Islam.” He may have referred to the March 5 edict.
According to Dr Junaid Khan, a polio eradication officer associated with the United Nations, there was a sharp decline in polio cases in 2015, when they dropped from 306 the previous year to only 54. “Instead of using force, parents should be convinced in the light of Islamic teachings and medical science that polio vaccines don’t carry any un-Islamic or harmful ingredients,” he says.
Most of Pakistan’s mainstream clerics favor polio vaccination and condemn attacks on anti-polio volunteers. “Without paying heed to any propaganda, it is the moral, legal and religious duty of parents to vaccinate their children against polio,” reads a document issued by the of Pakistan Ulema Council.
Another document, endorsed by Maulana Samiul Haq, Mufti Muhammad Naeem, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, Professor Sajid Mir, Mufti Zarwali Khan, Maulana Hanif Jalandhari, Maulana Zahid Mehmood Qasmi, Allama Zubair Ahmad Zaheer and Mufti Muneeb Ahmed, has also spoken in favor of polio vaccination.
On October 30, 2013, the conservative seminary Darul Uloom Haqqania of Akora Khattak in Nowshera issued a decree supporting all vaccination programs for children, including that for polio.
Tahir Ali is an Islamabad-based journalist
Twitter: @tahirafghan
“They were instigating people against polio vaccination and the state of Pakistan, and were inviting them to join an outlawed network,” said a press release by the Special Police Unit of Peshawar. The men were carrying 56 pamphlets at the time of their arrest, and had given some of them out to people in the Malazai village near the provincial capital.
Written by one Kainat Fatima in Urdu, the handbill says the anti-polio campaign is “a secret plan for Muslims genocide”.
“There are solid proofs of toxic ingredients in polio vaccines,” it says, citing ‘medical science’. “Polio drops disturb the hormone system, leading to impotency or abnormality.” Female children of the vaccinated girls will “lack femininity”, according to the pamphlet, and male children of the vaccinated boys will “lack masculinity”.
Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in world that have failed to control the crippling disease after Nigeria was declared polio-free in September 2015. According toEnd Polio Pakistan, five children have been tested positive with polio viruses in the country in 2016 so far. Three of these cases were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
On February 26, seven-month-old Naureen of Kohat, and 21-month-old Jareer Waliullah of Peshawar, were found to be infected with the virus. Another child was tested positive in Nowshera in the same month. The other two children, one in Karachi and another in Quetta, are also from Pashtun families.
The family of one of this year’s polio victims in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was conservative and religious, and had declined to get him vaccinated. “After the child was affected by the virus, his father started vaccinating him, but in vain,” said a health official in Peshawar.
"We will manufacture our own polio vaccine"
“Hate campaigns, ignorance, incredulity and attacks on polio vaccinators and their guards are the main reasons why Pakistan has failed to control the disease,” said Peshawar-based journalist Zawar Khan, who covers health related issues.
Jamaatul Ahrar, a splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, issued a 16-page edict on March 5. Titled “Polio: treatment or disease?”, the document argues that polio is not a leading cause of deaths in Pakistan and therefore not a significant issue. “To ignore the other critical diseases and to focus only on the less-fatal polio creates suspicions,” it argues.
“We are not against the concept of vaccination, and in certain cases we agree that vaccines can save lives. But we are against those who are running these programs,” the edict says, alleging that the Rotary Foundations is run by a freemason, and Bill Gates wants to reduce the world population. It also cites the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in 2011 to argue that the vaccination campaigns are in fact designed to “collect information for the CIA in Pakistan”.
The primary concern in Pakistan is not polio, it concludes, but the implementation of Sharia law in the country. “If we feel need to vaccinate children, we will manufacture our own polio vaccine and will run the anti-polio campaign under our own supervision. Until then, we impose a prohibition on polio vaccination and will punish the violators.”
A seven-minute video produced in line with the edict shows a militant who walks with the limp. The boy named Tauqeer caught poliovirus because of the vaccine, the message claims, and the drops can also cause HIV AIDS in humans.
This is not the first such instance of propaganda. In April last year, a video showed a burqa-clad woman claiming to be a doctor speaking against anti-polio programs in Pakistan. “The Pharaoh killed innocent children openly, but these worshipers of money are killing your children with poisonous vaccines under a secret plan.”
After a doctor named Shakeel Afridi was arrested for helping the CIA trace Osama Bin Laden with a fake polio vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, the group of Taliban led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan, and Mullah Nazir’s faction of Taliban in South Waziristan, banned polio vaccination in the areas under their control.
Since December 2012, at least 70 polio vaccinators and their guards have been killed and several others injured in various parts of the country. For almost two years, no militant groups claimed responsibility for such attacks. But on November 24, 2014, Jamaatul Ahrar took credit for an attack on an anti-polio team in Shabqadar. “We will soon release our policy statement on the polio vaccine,” its spokesman Ehsanullah Ehasan said. “We will show how it is hazardous to health according to science, and how it is against the teachings of Islam.” He may have referred to the March 5 edict.
According to Dr Junaid Khan, a polio eradication officer associated with the United Nations, there was a sharp decline in polio cases in 2015, when they dropped from 306 the previous year to only 54. “Instead of using force, parents should be convinced in the light of Islamic teachings and medical science that polio vaccines don’t carry any un-Islamic or harmful ingredients,” he says.
Most of Pakistan’s mainstream clerics favor polio vaccination and condemn attacks on anti-polio volunteers. “Without paying heed to any propaganda, it is the moral, legal and religious duty of parents to vaccinate their children against polio,” reads a document issued by the of Pakistan Ulema Council.
Another document, endorsed by Maulana Samiul Haq, Mufti Muhammad Naeem, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Hafiz Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, Professor Sajid Mir, Mufti Zarwali Khan, Maulana Hanif Jalandhari, Maulana Zahid Mehmood Qasmi, Allama Zubair Ahmad Zaheer and Mufti Muneeb Ahmed, has also spoken in favor of polio vaccination.
On October 30, 2013, the conservative seminary Darul Uloom Haqqania of Akora Khattak in Nowshera issued a decree supporting all vaccination programs for children, including that for polio.
Tahir Ali is an Islamabad-based journalist
Twitter: @tahirafghan