COVID-19 Pakistan: Looking back at how events unfolded
Coronavirus entered public discussions in Pakistan in January 2020 when Pakistani students in China were barred from travelling back to their country by the Chinese government. There were speculations in the media about how badly they were being treated by the Chinese authorities and how Pakistani government was helpless in coming to their rescue. They were said to be stuck in their dormitories for days without food and medicine. Their parents staged protests in front of government buildings demanding Pakistani government to evacuate their loved ones from Wuhan and Hubei. The government’s response was that these students were better off under the Chinese care in the prevailing circumstances, and that bringing them back was against public health advice on international travel to and from China. The Chinese embassy in Islamabad tweeted:
We will take care of them like our own[i].
The Chinese embassy declined Pakistani
Health Minister’s request for a visit to China to meet these students. Instead
of that the Chinese ambassador recorded video messages to assure all possible
support extend to these students[ii].The
health minister held a number of video recorded telephone calls with the students,
which were uploaded on social media. In one such recording, he is seen telling a
student
Trust
me, I am so worried about your situation that I can’t sleep properly at night[iii]
Seeing that neither the students nor
their parents were satisfied with such assurances, and that despite the public
health advice against international travel, other countries around the world
were evacuating their citizens from China, the President of Pakistan stepped in
by invoking a saying of Prophet Muhammad to justify his government’s stance
over this issue. The saying goes like this:
One twitter user commented that the president himself suffered from ‘QuranAvirus’. Another challenged Pakistan authorities to ‘have some guts’ and stand up to Chinese’ government as other had done by insisting on bringing back their fellow citizens[iv].
While the issue of student safety and
return was hot in the press and the social media, the health ministry issued a
‘National Action Plan for Preparedness & Response to COVID-19’. Following
this plan, a large number of diagnostic tests were carried out, especially
among those who had a recent travel history from China. Initially, biological samples
were sent to China for testing but within weeks Pakistan developed Coronavirus
testing capability. The government also started a mass awareness to encourage
people to come forward for tests and to counter misinformation about the
infection. A telephone hotline for complaints and questions about polio
vaccination was now dedicated to reporting COVID symptoms and answering
questions about Coronavirus. The government established Coronavirus Standard
Operating Procedures (SOPs) at all major international airports and issued
clinical preparedness and prevention guidelines for hospitals and clinics.
The fact
that the first few cases were diagnosed (in Feb 2020) among returning Shia
pilgrims from Iran rather than those coming back from China, changed the public
discourse around COVID in Pakistan from a distinct disease - the infidels’
punishment from God for eating haram
animals [v]–
to a curse brought home by the irresponsible Shia pilgrims[vi].
Shia are a religious minority in Pakistan who are often accused of heretic
beliefs and subjected to violent attacks by extremist groups from the Sunni
majority[vii].
This
‘othering discourse’ around an epidemic – from infidel Chinese to heretic Shia
– was not new. Similar discourses surfaced during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the
1990s, though the ‘other’ at that time were the ‘sexually licentious’ westerners,
local prostitutes, drug users and transgendered people. This time, however, with
the Coronavirus epidemic there were no set templates for intervention. There
were no established epidemiological ‘risk groups’ for this epidemic that Pakistan could borrow from
the world as it had done in case of HIV/AIDS epidemic, where intervention were
targeted mainly on Female Sex Workers (FSWs), Transgender (TG), Injecting Drug
Users (IDUs) and ‘Men who have Sex with Men’ (MSM).
The sheer
pace at which the virus spread across the globe turning it into a pandemic
within weeks meant that country-responses around the world were developing
simultaneously. There was little to learn from others’ experiences. There were
no tried and tested models to deal with this epidemic. All there was, was the
noise about brutality of ‘herd immunity’ type thinking which would let this
infection take its course, let it run
through the large sections of population and die down eventually; and the
tyranny of government crackdowns and lockdowns, if the course of epidemic was
to be disrupted through public health and security measures.
The first approach
was accused of letting people die and the second of killing through starvation
by restriction on social and economic life! Some people, internationally, saw this
epidemic as a great leveler; that the disease does not distinguish between
people and that anyone and everyone, regardless of their wealth, health, piety
or other personal attributes, was at risk[viii].
Unlike HIV/AIDS which had its ‘risk groups’ based on personal behaviour and
sexual or gender identity –very often wrongly so - this epidemic put everyone
at risk. Yet, rather than a great leveller, COVID-19 proved to be an inequality
magnifier in Pakistan due to the state’s action and inaction with regard to the
vulnerabilities of certain individuals and groups, as past three years have shown.
[i]
Chinese Embassy in Pakistan (@CathyPak) on February 23, 2020:
[ii]
Chinese Embassy in Pakistan (@CatheyPak) on February 10, 2020: https://twitter.com/CathayPak/status/1226896043725459457
[iii]
Ministry of National Health Services, Pakistan (@nhrcofficial) on February 10,
2020: https://twitter.com/nhsrcofficial/status/1226858226249031687
[iv]Dr
Arif Alvi, President of Pakistan (@ArifAlvi) on January 31, 2020: https://twitter.com/ArifAlvi/status/1223233085954719744
[v]
‘Chines people have put the world at stake: Shoaib Akhtar “really angry” over
coronavirus outbreak’. India Today, March 14, 2020: https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/coronavirus-china-shoaib-akhtar-eat-bats-animals-psl-1655448-2020-03-14.
Also see this https://images.dawn.com/news/1184847
[vi]
Mirza (2020). Pakistan’s Hazara Shia minority blamed fro spread of Covid-19.
IDS News and Opinions 17 April 2020: https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/pakistans-hazara-shia-minority-blamed-for-spread-of-covid-19/
[vii]
Human Rights Watch (2014). Pakistan’s Shia Under Attack: https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/07/pakistans-shia-under-attack
[viii]
Kapadia (2020). Covid-19 – The great Leveller. Ipsos April 24,2020: https://www.ipsos.com/en-in/covid-19-great-leveller
Comments
Post a Comment