Ten arrested for spreading misinformation, derailing polio campaign in Pakistan’s northwest

PESHAWAR: Ten people have been arrested in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for trying to derail an ongoing anti-polio drive with a concerted misinformation campaign, police said on Wednesday, as two policemen assigned to protect polio teams were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the last two days.
Along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, Pakistan is one of the only three countries where complete polio eradication has not yet been achieved, but case numbers are at the lowest level ever, with only eight cases reported in 2019. The country’s success follows an intense program based around vaccinating vulnerable children. 
On Monday, the program was thrown into jeopardy as panic spread across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province due to reports that hundreds of schoolchildren had to be rushed to health facilities apparently after being administered polio vaccine drops. It emerged the following day that parents had acted on rumors spread over community and mosque loudspeakers, and reported by mainstream and social media and shared on WhatsApp.
In Mashokhel, where the rumor apparently originated, a local health unit was set on fire by rioters, while a terrified public overwhelmed streets and hospitals across the province.
“Police have enhanced patrolling in the city to ensure smooth flow of the campaign,” Muhammad Ilyas, a spokesman for Peshawar police, told Arab News. “More arrests are expected as police raids continue in different localities of the city.”
Ilyas said among the ten people arrested was Nazar Muhammad who first spread misinformation about the anti-polio drive on Monday and was seen in viral social media videos coaxing children to pretend to fall ill after being administered polio drops. In other videos that also went viral, he was seen claiming that many children had fainted after being vaccinated.
Last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s office urged the country’s telecoms regulator to take action against misinformation spread on social media discouraging vaccination against polio and other diseases.
Separately last month, Facebook Inc, which along with other social media companies has faced growing pressure over spurious content spread on its platform, announced it would remove user groups and pages that contained misinformation about vaccinations. Online video sharing site YouTube has also said it would take action to stop advertising revenue to channels promoting anti-vaccination content.
On Monday, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Dr. Hisham Inamullah Khan told reporters that complaints of headaches, nausea and abdominal pain by children were “psychological and triggered by panic” caused by the misinformation campaign and rumors.
Babar bin Atta, the prime minister’s focal person on polio eradication, told Arab News the anti-polio drive was continuing throughout the province despite the misinformation campaign and the hunt was on to identify culprits behind Monday’s “nasty propaganda.”
“Not a single child at any hospital has been found to be affected [by the polio drops],” Atta said, adding that all of the children brought to hospitals were quickly discharged because they were in stable condition.
A nation-wide anti-polio campaign was kicked off in Pakistan on Monday, targeting 39 million children in all four provinces, including Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
“The panic was aimed at jeopardizing the polio eradication drive to put our children at risk but the perpetrators will be taken to task,” Atta said. “What they have done is a criminal act.”
Shehzad Kaukab, a spokesman for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police, said an assistant sub-Inspector Imran (last name not given) had been killed in the Bannu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while police constable Zafar Khan was killed in the province’s Bunner area.
No group has accepted responsibility for the killings. Many extremists, including Taliban militants, have long opposed the polio campaign, saying it is used to sterilize Muslims.