Pakistani Taliban guns down 6 anti-polio workers, claiming vaccination programme is a 'Western plot' - Polidicks

[url]http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/12/20121218112425185915.html[/url] [quote=AJE]Gunmen in Pakistan have shot dead six health workers associated with an anti-polio campaign in a string of attacks, officials say. It was not clear who was behind the shootings in the southern city of Karachi and northern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, but Taliban fighters have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a "Western plot". The government's immunisation campaign against the crippling disease was suspended in Karachi following the attacks. Three women were killed and two men wounded in two separate attacks on health workers in Karachi on Tuesday, said Imran Shaukat, a senior police superintendent. The team had received telephone calls warning workers they would regret helping the "infidel" campaign against polio, said health official Gul Naz, who oversees the project in the area where the women were shot. A female anti-polio worker was also shot dead in Karachi on Monday, the United Nations said. Shaukat said that the attacks were co-ordinated and occured at the same time in different parts of the city. [B]Peshawar attacks[/B] In the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday, gunmen on a motorcycle shot a 17-year-old girl supervising an anti-polio campaign, said Javed Marwar, a government official. The girl died of her wounds, a doctor said. The incident took place in the Mathra suburb of the city, which borders the Mohmand tribal area, Javed Khan, a police official, said. All of the victims were Pakistanis who were working with a UN-backed programme to eradicate polio, a disease that attacks the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection. The disease has been wiped out in all but a handful of countries. At least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year. In Karachi, Sagheer Ahmed, the provincial health minister, said that the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the anti-polio drive in the province. Officials could not confirm if all the attacks were linked to the health campaign, said Matthew Coleman, a spokesman for the United Nations Children's Fund. "We're concerned for the safety of front-line workers. They are the true heroes," he said. [B]Government campaign[/B] There have been at least three other shootings involving polio eradication workers this year. Speaking to Al Jazeera from Islamabad, Zafar Jaspal, a professor at Quaid-e-Azam University, said in big cities Karachi the health workers become "very easy targets", making it much more difficult for the government to protect them from threats. The government, in conjunction with UN agencies, is on a nationwide campaign to give oral polio drops to 34 million children under the age of five. Vaccination programmes, especially those with international links, however, have been branded "conspiracies" by many religious leaders for years. Matters were not helped when a Pakistani doctor ran a fake vaccination programme last year to help the CIA track down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Speaking to Al Jazeera from Islamabad, Zafar Jaspal, a professor at Quaid-e-Azam University, said some groups suspect the polio campaigns "have been exploited or misused for data collection" in areas with suspected Taliban presence. Launching the polio drive on Monday, Pakistani authorities threatened to punish tribesmen in the country's tribal areas who refuse to allow their children to be inoculated. Siraj Ahmad Khan, the top official in the North Waziristan tribal area, said the punishments would include a ban on monthly stipends to tribal elders, development work, civil service recruitment and issuing ID cards and passports.[/quote]

Negotiations won't work with these dumb fucks

Fucking assholes. Gunning down people who help alleviate the suffering of people with polio. I'd like to see those jerks paralyzed, and then see how they treat the anti-polio workers.

I wonder why scumbags like these are allowed to live. I wish they would turn dead with polio themselves. I do hope Karma gets back at them one day.

this is a terrifying form of psychological warfare

Well, we actually have used things like this as leverage before, so I can understand why they'd do that. Doesn't change the fact that it's fucking horrible, though.

Inject them all with polio

We used a doctor going door to door in Pakistan to find Bin Laden. So that blood is actually on our hands, as well as the hands of the killers.

[QUOTE=cecilbdemodded;38878300]We used a doctor going door to door in Pakistan to find Bin Laden. So that blood is actually on our hands, as well as the hands of the killers.[/QUOTE] The blood is on the hands of the dumb fucking wastes of breathable air that shot and killed 6 humans that were trying to help other humans

Somebody's been reading Prison Planet and Drudge Report. This isn't the first time people in developing countries have lost their shit after reading some insane right-wing conspiracy theory in American media.

What do you call a terrorist with 4 goats? A pimp

To put this into perspective, there are two diseases that have existed at one point and officially do not. One is smallpox. The other is Rinderpest, a disease affecting cattle (still devastating to economies, et cetera). And there are two that are [I]bastard[/I] close to eradication: dracunculiasis and polio. Whereas once they numbered in the hundreds of thousands yearly, these two diseases are proclaimed to be the next in line for total eradication from planet Earth, with only a few hundred cases yearly. They're a bastard to get completely done with, though; compared to squeezing Jell-O to bits. Estimates give it about another five years or so before we can add either to our eradicated diseases list. But these guys might have bumped it back a year or so, perhaps. Fuck them.

Polio confirmed tied to terrorism.

Nobody likes you anymore, Taliban.

This sounds like the work of Imam Hamid Al-Ghazali..

I hate those goddamn fucktards so much. What makes people act that stupid? "DON'T SAVE ME BRO!"

[QUOTE=TonyP;38878232]Inject them all with polio[/QUOTE] Let us give all troops these. [IMG]http://tf2wiki.net/w/images/thumb/7/7f/BLU_Syringe_Gun.png/250px-BLU_Syringe_Gun.png[/IMG]

I'd hate them more if it wasn't for the fact that we actually abused the program and used it to track them down. Previous to that, the vaccine was administered with very little pushback.

[QUOTE=SilentOpp;38882602]I'd hate them more if it wasn't for the fact that we actually abused the program and used it to track them down. Previous to that, the vaccine was administered with very little pushback.[/QUOTE] I don't know about Pakistan but [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poliomyelitis_eradication#2001.E2.80.932004]Nigeria banned the vaccine in 2003[/url] over false rumours that it caused sterility in girls. Polio would have been eradicated by now if not for that.