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Alistair Thornton reports from Beijing on the Chinese authorities response to the swine flu pandemic

Since the outbreak of H1N1 in Mexico in March, fears over the swine flu virus spreading have caused heightened vigilance, and drawn sharp responses from governments worldwide. The Chinese, however, have really over-egged it.

When the World Health Organization declared the virus a global pandemic on 11 June, China had 188 confirmed cases, with many more likely undetected. But despite the seriousness of the threat, some of the measures taken by the authorities have been wildly over-the-top. Take, for example, my office lift in downtown Beijing. All the buttons are now covered with a transparent plastic sheet, and are sanitised every two hours. Yes. Every two hours.

Despite scientific evidence and expert advice to the contrary, in late April China banned the import of live pigs and pork products from Mexico and three US states. A week later, Beijing slapped a ban on Canadian pork imports as well. Governments and international bodies hit back immediately, with the Canadian agriculture minister lambasting China for ‘operating outside of sound science’, and the WHO politely requesting that China explain its rationale.

When the first swine flu case was reported on the mainland in early May, the authorities snapped into action, and within 24 hours, they had managed to track down and quarantine over 80 per cent of the people who had come into contact with the victim. But as the virus escalated, so did the measures adopted. Over the past couple of months, health inspectors, often wearing full hazmat suits, have regularly boarded planes minutes after their arrival in China and thrust ‘temperature guns’ at passengers’ foreheads. Not the friendliest way to welcome travel-weary tourists.

Some of those unlucky enough to have had contact with a confirmed case have found themselves in something resembling a Joseph Heller novel. An American-Chinese traveller, who had sat within three rows of a confirmed case on a flight into Shanghai, was quarantined in a hotel on the outskirts of the city for seven days. And here’s the catch-22: He was denied a blood test – the official way to confirm whether a person carries the virus or not – because he did not look sick enough. And without a blood test proving he did not carry the virus, he was not allowed to leave…

It also appears that the authorities have taken to detaining Mexicans, purely because they are Mexican. When Gustavo Carrillo touched down in China on a flight from the US, his fellow passengers were prodded with the temperature gun. Not him. After seeing his Mexican passport, the health inspectors simply packed him off to quarantine. And Gustavo is not alone; before the Mexican government organised airlifts in mid-May, over 70 Mexicans were in quarantine. This, understandably, provoked a harsh response, with President Calderon criticising the ‘humiliating and discriminatory measures that some countries have taken against Mexicans’.

Six years ago, when the SARS pandemic spread rapidly from Guangdong province in Southern China, Beijing was slammed for its weak response and lack of transparency. Then came bird flu, and all eyes returned to China as it grappled to deal with the problem.

With its huge population and patchy medical infrastructure, China is particularly vulnerable should H1N1 spiral out of control, and this time the government is determined not to let that happen. But, in overreacting, the authorities have achieved exactly what they sought to avoid – international criticism and increased scrutiny

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Austin Mackell reports on the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Iranian capital

Since my last post, violence has engulfed Tehran, with police (sometimes accompanied supporters of the victorious president Ahmadinejad) clashing with anti-Ahmadinejad rioters across the city. The violence has been centred around Valias Street, the main north-south route through Tehran, where crowds could be seen erecting barricades and burning what they told me were police motorcycles. I also saw a mob of anti-government rioters, armed with planks of wood and cinderblocks, descend on a man in civilian clothes they claimed was a member of the Basij, a youth militia group close to the religious authorities and, by association, President Ahmedinejad.

The violence, however, has not been contained in that one location, with protesters smashing banks and making bonfires of skip bins, garbage, wood and whatever else they can lay their hands on the roads across the city.

As I write this, the fighting continues, with groups of police, increasingly accompanied by pro-Ahmadinejad civilians armed with makeshift batons, pursuing the rioters, who in most cases disperse when set upon, only to regroup elsewhere.

In this chaos, the rules governing press coverage, as most other rules, have completely disappeared, with fully accredited journalists in the company of government-approved translators being arrested, beaten and having their cameras and tapes stolen. To make things harder, for both the protesters and the press, SMS services have been unavailable since Thursday night, and now calls from mobiles are also impossible.

According to many, however, this is just the beginning. As the government has banned the extension of any press visas, most of the foreign press (including myself) will be forced out of the country in the next few days. Once this has happened, there will be one less reason for the police to show what little restraint they are currently demonstrating in dealing with the protests.

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Austin Mackell, on the verge of being deported from Iran, asks whether the ‘results’ of the Iranian election are nothing more than a cynical sham

The festival of democracy that had so raised hopes of change amongst Iranians and in the world’s media is over. This morning, government media announced that with 80 per cent of the votes (30 million) counted incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won by a truly incredible margin – apparently he got more than twice as many votes as the main opposition candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi (who at 1am local time had claimed victory, saying he had 54 per cent of the vote).

Other candidates, such as the even more reform-oriented Mehdi Karroubi, are reported to have received less than one per cent of the vote (a tiny fraction of the percentage Karroubi received in the 2005 elections). Even more incredibly, the interior ministry has announced that not a single invalid ballot was cast (no hanging chads here).



There are also reports that one of Mr Karoubi's main supporters, the one-time Mayor of Tehran, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, was arrested last night.

Following the announcement of Ahmadinejad's ‘landslide win’, the Ministry for Islamic Guidance and Culture, who are responsible for granting and extending press visas (which are only given out for a week to 10 days at a time) have also announced that since there will be no second round of voting there will be ‘no extension of visa at all’.

The wisdom of this seems questionable, as most journalists were planning on leaving soon after the elections any how. This, along with a sudden increase in interference with journalists’ work, can only discredit the reported results further.

However, if credibility was a concern, the announced results would probably have been much close to 50-50. Either the leadership here thinks everyone is very stupid, or they are sending another message – that while the Islamic Republic may go through the motions of a democratic process, that process will not be permitted to challenge the power of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Guidance Council, to whom Ahmadinejad is very close, and who issued statements in support of him.

The story, however, may not end there, as feelings are running high amongst the supporters of the other candidates, who are facebooking and tweeting at a feverish rate. Other technology is being heavily censored though: SMSs, which were the main way last week’s constant street protests/parties of the last week had been organised, have been blocked since the night before the vote, along with even more websites than usual including the Sydney Morning Herald and the BBC.

‘The first hours we were all shocked... very down,’ a young woman called Ghazaleh told me. Yet the many opposition reporters retain their optimism. ‘We feel like something good could still happen,’ Ghazaleh continued.

A popular image being circulated is of a burst of flame in the shape of Iran. This resonates with an expression on the lips of some I have spoken to, that ‘embers [are] under the ashes’…

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Australian baby boomers concerned with the perceived political apathy of their ‘Gen X/Y’ kids should consider banning alcohol, rock concerts and premarital sex as they’ve done in Iran, where the elections have triggered a massive outburst of enthusiasm, says Austin Mackell

For over a week now in the lead up to the Iranian presidential elections, the streets of Tehran have been filled with young people excited to a point nearing hysteria. Older people I’ve been talking to say they haven’t seen anything like it since the revolution of 1979.  

While the supporters of the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are definitely out in force, they are outnumbered more than two to one by the green-clad supporters of his opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a reformer who promises a ‘new greeting to the world’ and who was prime minister during Iran’s long war with in Iraq.

While many are clearly there more out of a desire to take part in the excitement than due to any strong political convictions (like a carload of young man I met who were carrying posters for both candidates), some are deadly serious and on occasions the vocal confrontations have spilled over into street fights.

Many say they are fearful that when a loser is announced things could turn quite ugly, with both sides already throwing (quite possibly well-founded) allegations of corruption at the other, and liable to cry foul if they don’t like the results.

Update: A strange and sudden calm – 12 June, 2009

It’s the night before the election and the rowdy youth that had swarmed the streets of Tehran have disappeared. No-one is sure if anything in particular has happened to keep them away or if there was just a general sense that the party was over at least until after the first day of voting (today).

There is a ban on electioneering by the candidates on the last day of the campaign, but since there is a constant ban on political protests and rallies, that doesn’t account for this strange and sudden calm…

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The Iranian presidential election is shaping up to be closer than many in the West predicted. And, reports Austin Mackell from Tehran, the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is doing himself no favours days out from the polls… 

Tehran’s prayer grounds are so big, they have a metro station at each end. Although today’s event was ostensibly secular, there was a distinctly religious fervour among the crowds massing for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s major rally as the country prepares for Friday’s elections.

Obsessed with seeing their idol as close as possible, hundreds upon hundreds of Ahmadinejad’s young male supporters swarmed into the area at the front of the stage designated for press and the disabled, forcing us to be led to the relative seclusion of a balcony above the stage.

I say ‘relative’, because the zeal of the Iranian reporters and photographers easily matched that of their compatriots in the tens of thousands (claims circulated by the Ahmadinejad camp of a million-strong turnout are way off the mark) below us. It was a scene more reminiscent of a rock concert than a political rally. Even Barack Obama would struggle to generate this kind of emotion.  

From our vantage point we could see the disabled being passed through the crowds like rag dolls towards a space beside the stage, their wheelchairs and bags following behind them. Others followed having passed out from the heat or been injured in the crush. Blood spurted from the nose of one supporter as he struggled to escape the crowd.

Yet the absurdity of the situation was heightened by the yawning space at the back of the women’s section of the segregated crowd, where children kicked empty bottles back and forth to pass the time.

Meanwhile, the stage was occupied by a procession of Ahmadinejad’s celebrity supporters – the coach and players from Iran’s soccer team, famous television and movie directors, a Madduh (singer of Islamic songs) of television fame, and, most importantly, world champion weightlifter and Iranian hero Rezah Zadeh. The struggle for position both on the balcony and off intensified.

‘Here it comes,’ we all thought. ‘Here he comes.’

Only…

There was a strange pause for a few minutes and then the Muddah was singing for a clearly unscheduled second time. Next, someone was leading the crowd in chants calling Ahmadinejad’s opponents corrupt and calling for the fall of America and Israel. There was a nervousness in the body language of the men around the stage. They were stalling.

As more time passed, the hysteria of the crowd and its frightening surges increased, swamping the small space for the disabled. We saw Amir – a  wheelchair-bound 32-year-old the size of a small boy, who had told us upon our arrival that he was here to support the president because it was what the supreme leader Khameini wanted – being bundled off through the backstage area. People began to fight to leave, tearing down the flags that had adorned the balconies as they searched for a way out.

It was only after more than two hours of this increasing chaos that defeat was finally admitted. Ahmadinejad’s motorcade had been unable to negotiate the crowds, so instead he had simply waved to his supporters in the courtyard outside the building, and the event was declared over.

Of the people we spoke to on the way out, none would admit to even being disappointed at having missed out on a chance to see the president speak, let alone to being unimpressed with his organisation’s inability to manage the rabble it had roused. It just showed how loved he was, they insisted.

There was, however, a quietness that hung over the departing crowd, completely out of step with the current atmosphere, characterised by groups of young, rival supporters cheering and dancing through the streets. As I write, the sound of hoots, horns, whistles, chants and songs pumping from car stereos fills the air. It’s midnight here and this will go on until almost dawn, just as it has been doing on a nightly basis for weeks.

The supporters can be identified by colour-coded wrist bands – Ahmadinejad’s fans sport bands with green, red and white stripes, matching the colours of the Iranian flag in which they are often also draped, while followers of his main opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, wear bands of simple green.

Both groups are surprisingly diverse. While some fit the stereotype (like the man leaving Ahmadinejad’s rally with the passenger seat of his ute empty while the women and children rode in the tray), others don’t. Attractive girls in tight jeans wearing brightly scarves pulled back past the centre of their heads can be seen with the tricolour Ahmadinejad ribbons, and women in full black chardors with Mousavi’s green.

Both sets of supporters are willing their candidates over the line, and it’s hard to believe that the monumental cock-up – can things fail on a Koranic scale? – of Ahmadinejad failing to appear at his own rally so close to the election won’t be a factor in what seems to be a very close race.