ISLAMABAD - An alliance of Pakistani clerics will hold demonstrations across the country against the killings of polio eradication campaign workers, leaders said on Thursday, as the death toll from attacks this week rose to nine.
Tahir Ashrafi, who heads the moderate Pakistan Ulema Council, said that 24,000 mosques associated with his organisation would preach against the killings of health workers in Juma sermons.
“Neither Pakistani customs nor Islam would allow or endorse this. Far from doing something wrong, these girls are martyrs for Islam because they were doing a service to humanity and Islam,” he said.
Ashrafi’s words are a clear signal that some of Pakistan’s powerful clergy are willing to challenge violent militants.
Gunmen on motorbikes have killed nine anti-polio campaign workers this week, including a man who died of his wounds on Thursday. Some of the dead were teenage girls.
“The killers of these girls are not worthy of being called Muslims or human beings,” said Maulana Asadullah Farooq, of the Jamia Manzur Islamia, one of the biggest madrassas, or religious schools, in the city of Lahore.
“We have held special prayers for the martyrs at our mosque and will hold more prayers after Friday prayers. We also ask other mosques to come forward and pray for the souls of these brave martyrs.”
The disagreement between some clerics and militants may be indicative of a wider drop in support for militancy in Pakistan, said Mansur Khan Mahsud, director of research at the Islamabad-based think-tank the FATA Research Centre.
Mahsud said many people had welcomed the Taliban because they believed Islamic law would help address corruption and injustice. But as the Taliban began executing and kidnapping people, some turned against them.
Concerted vaccination efforts have seen infections in Pakistan fall to 56 this year, 45 of which were in the tribal districts, which are strongholds for Taliban and other militants, and neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
“Certain elements we refer to as Taliban, though it’s a very general term, feel threatened by the presence of people going round vaccinating children in their areas,” Guido Sabatinelli, the top World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Pakistan, said.
In Afghanistan, Sabatinelli said, the Taliban are “absolutely in favour” of vaccination, but in Pakistan suspicion of immunisation programmes intensified.
Sabatinelli said WHO and its local health partners had made strenuous efforts to work with religious leaders to dispel these myths - often spread by imams.
Resistance also comes from parents, often poorly educated and impressionable, who believe wild conspiracy theories about the vaccine.
“They think polio drops contain pig fats, some said it will make the children infertile and they will not be able to become father and mother in future,” said Janbaz Afridi, a senior doctor working on the polio campaign in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Here are some key quotes:
- Siddique Akbar 30, who runs a car centre in Peshawar, has three sons, aged six, four and two. He says he stopped giving his sons polio drops three years ago. “I have been told by very reliable doctors and practitioners of herbal medicines that the vaccine contains an element which reduces sexual potential,” he said. “Our children will be become impotent when they grow up. That is why I have refused their inoculation.”
- Taj Gul, 32, property dealer on the outskirts of Peshawar who has two daughters aged four and two.
“We receive polio vaccine from abroad and there is no authentic research in Pakistan to determine what it contains,” he said. “I have authentic sources in health department who have told me that these drops have pig fats and another element which reduces sexual power.”
- Maulana Abdul Ali, a 60-year old prayer leader at a Peshawar mosque.
“I have heard from senior clerics that there are some suspicions over the contents of polio vaccine and Islam forbids use of any substance about which you have suspicions,” he said. “If people come to seek my advice I tell them if I had kids or young children I would not permit them to take polio drops.”
- Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the information minister for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a polio hotspot, said doubts about vaccination schemes were heightened when a Pakistani doctor was jailed after using a hepatitis programme as cover to help the CIA track down Osama bin Laden in 2011.
“The local community has lost faith in polio vaccination after Dr Shakeel Afridi’s saga,” he said. “Terrorists have also turned against the polio campaign after killing of Osama bin Laden.”