'State secret' fuelling a flurry of rumours, including a bioterrorist act or population control measure Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
China's reported refusal to cooperate with the World Health Organization to track the origins of the SARS outbreak on the grounds it is a "state secret" is fuelling a flurry of rumours and conspiracy theories.
Among them:
- That the pneumonia-like illness was unleashed by the Chinese government itself in a germ warfare, population-control measure.
- That it's a bioterrorist act.
- That it's a genetic engineering experiment that escaped, accidentally or on purpose, from a lab.
Indeed, the rumours and conspiracy theories being reported in Chinese- and English-language newspapers are spreading faster than the actual disease and the World Health Organization has even set up an official rumour control centre in Geneva.
Locally, the Yaohan Centre, an Asian shopping mall in Richmond, is finding out how fast the rumours spread, not to mention the economic effect.
Aaron Leung, property manager for the shopping mall, said he's been working nonstop for the past few days to counter a rumour that a merchant had SARS. Shoppers have been staying away in droves.
"Business is down in some stores by 30 to 40 per cent," Leung said of the effect on the 90 stores in the mall because of paranoia surrounding the SARS outbreak.
Leung said he asked the Vancouver Coastal Health authority to confirm if one of the local suspected or confirmed SARS victims was an individual who worked at the mall and was assured that was not the case.
Jan Walls, an Asian expert at Simon Fraser University who is director of the David Lam Centre for International Communication, said the Chinese government appears to be fully engaged in "image management to save face."
That essentially means that anything which might embarrass the government or the country is branded a state secret. Such control over the outflow of information usually backfires, he added.
Chinese dailies have reported the government is flip-flopping on the issue of how much it will co-operate with the World Health Organization. While Walls said it's preposterous to think SARS was unleashed on the population by the government, he is uncertain about the more commonly held bioterrorist attack theory.
He is mostly convinced it was an illness incubated in a highly populated, subtropical area, "which is a natural breeding ground for all kinds of diseases and new strains of infections and viruses."
Barry Beyerstein, an SFU psychology professor and expert on conspiracy theories, said his experience as a visiting professor in China a decade ago, convinced him that the state's rule with respect to controversies is to "reveal nothing and work from there."
Beyerstein said the fact the government hasn't been open about the public health threat only serves to fuel the conspiracy theories and spreads panic.
pfayerman@png.canwest.com
Global Virus
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