The EconomistDecember 7th 2019 Asia 572
1corruption on its part.
Nonetheless, another of Mr Matrai-
mov’s brothers, an mp, has reluctantly
stepped down from the parliamentary
committee formed to investigate Saimaiti’s
murder. Police have arrested on suspicion
of corruption Erkin Sopokov, the consul in
Istanbul when Saimaiti died, after his car
was found near the scene of the shooting.
Politicians have started blaming one
another for the scandal. Sooronbay Jeyen-
bekov, the president, is trying to shrug off
Mr Matraimov’s enthusiastic support for
his election campaign in 2017. His prede-
cessor, Almazbek Atambayev, is trying to
explain how the smuggling ring became es-
tablished on his watch. (Mr Matraimov
once boasted of having enjoyed the ex-president’s “personal backing”, although
he was dismissed from the customs service
the day before Mr Atambayev left office, in
2017.) As it was, Kyrgyz politics was in
uproar due to the arrest of Mr Atambayev,
who is alleged to have helped a mafia boss
secure early release from prison—a claim
he dismisses as an effort by Mr Jeyenbekov
to smear him.
Street protests have toppled govern-
ments twice recently in Kyrgyzstan, in
2005 and 2010. Inevitably, protesters have
taken to the streets again, although only in
the hundreds so far. Whatever the truth of
the various allegations, the feud between
the two presidents and the steady flow of
scandals do not make anyone in govern-
ment look good.^7S
amoa’s streetsare silent. The only
busy spots are the country’s hospitals,
where fearful families queue for vaccina-
tions. An epidemic of the measles has so
far produced 4,000 infections and 60
deaths, in a country of 200,000 people.
The government has announced a state
of emergency, closed all schools and
banned private vehicles from the roads.
People have been told to stay in their
homes, and hang red cloths in front of
them to indicate the presence of unvacci-
nated residents. Mobile vaccination
units are touring the country in a manda-
tory mass inoculation campaign.
Measles has spread so rapidly in
Samoa because only a small proportion
of children has been vaccinated. The
World Health Organisation estimates
that just 31% of infants received the
vaccine in 2018, down from 90% in 2013.
Distrust of the health system was fuelled
by the death last year of two babies who
had mistakenly been administered a
muscle relaxant along with the vaccine.
In response, the government put measles
vaccinations on hold. Anti-vax activists
spread false rumours that hospitals were
using faulty or expired vaccines and, as
in other countries, repeated the de-
bunked claim that immunisation is
linked to autism.
Although the nurses responsible for
the botched vaccinations were tried and
imprisoned, many Samoans remained
suspicious. Some responded to the out-
break by praying instead of seeking
vaccination or treatment, or by adminis-
tering traditional remedies, such as
oiling the red blotchy skin that is a symp-
tom of the disease.Such responses prompted the govern-
ment to make vaccination mandatory.
The prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele
Malielegaoi, has called on village coun-
cils, faith-based organisations and
church leaders, among others, to per-
suade the hold-outs. The authorities say
65,000 people been vaccinated in recent
days, and the government aims to bring
the rate to 90% within 48 hours.
The crisis offers clear proof of the
dangers of anti-vax propaganda. Al-
though the outbreak probably originated
in New Zealand, where many Samoans
live, and has spread to neighbouring Fiji,
neither of those countries has suffered
nearly so serious an epidemic because
vaccination rates are much higher. Fiji
also provides a lesson in how deadly
measles can be. In 1875 an outbreak there
killed a quarter of the population.Red alert
Measles in SamoaWELLINGTON
The anti-vax movement causes an epidemicBetter late than never“F
acebook is legallyrequired to tell
you that the Singapore government
says this post has false information,” reads
the message, which links to a government
website. It appeared on November 30th on
a post published by the States Times Re-
view, a blog which delights in hectoring the
Singaporean authorities. The post alleged
that the country’s elections are rigged and
that the next one could “possibly turn Sin-
gapore into a Christian state”.
The idea that the ruling People’s Action
Party is trying to turn Singapore into a the-
ocracy is absurd—even “scurrilous”, as the
government put it. (The contention that it
rigs elections is more defensible, although
it does so not by stuffing ballot boxes, but
by making life difficult for its critics and
threatening adverse consequences for ar-
eas that vote for the opposition. It has won
every general election in the past 60 years.)
The government, deeming the post
false, asked its founder, who lives in Aus-
tralia, to publish a correction notice under
the Prevention from Online Falsehoods
and Manipulation Act (pofma), which
came into effect in October. He refused,
noting that the Australian authorities had
not asked him to remove anything, but
thanked the Singaporean government for
boosting traffic to his site. Officials had
more luck with Facebook, which made the
notice visible to users in Singapore. States
Times Review’s website is blocked in Sin-
gapore, so Facebook is its chief means of
reaching people there.
The episode was not pofma’s only out-
ing in recent weeks. The finance minister,
Heng Swee Keat, who is widely expected to
become the next prime minister, decided
to invoke it against an obscure opposition
politician, Brad Bowyer, who had ques-
tioned the independence and investment
nous of Singapore’s sovereign-wealth
funds. Mr Bowyer’s post had indeed con-
tained errors, on which the authorities
seized. But its main contention—that the
government’s investments were not as well
managed as they could be—is clearly a sub-
jective matter.
The hubbub over the two orders relates
more to the display of pofma’s powers than
to the details of the posts themselves. The
law aims “to prevent the electronic com-
munication in Singapore of false state-
ments of fact” and “to suppress support for
and counteract the effects of such commu-
nication”, among other things. It allowsSINGAPORE
A tough new law bolsters ministers in
their quest for truthFreedom of speech in SingaporeFalse witness