Reuters: US admits spreading misinformation about China's Covid vaccine
The Pentagon is said to have created hundreds of fake social media accounts to convince Filipinos that the Sinovac shot is "fake".
According to RT, Reuters news agency recently reported that the US military has admitted that it has conducted a secret campaign to discredit China's Sinovac vaccine in the Philippines and across Asia and the Middle East.
“It does send a message to the Philippine public questioning the safety and efficacy of Sinovac,” Pentagon officials wrote to their Philippine counterparts in a letter dated June 25 and reported by Reuters on July 26.
According to the document, the Pentagon acknowledged that it "made some missteps in its messaging regarding Covid" but assured Manila that it had stopped the practice by the end of 2021 and had since "significantly improved oversight and accountability of its information operations."
A Reuters investigation revealed last month that the campaign in question began in 2020, after China announced it would distribute free doses of its Sinovac vaccine in the Philippines. In an effort to counter this public relations benefit to Beijing, the Pentagon ordered its psychological operations center in Florida to create at least 300 fake social media accounts to discredit China’s vaccine.
"COVID came from China and VACCINE also came from China, don't trust China!" is part of a typical post created by the psychological campaign group. Or another post reads: "From China - PPE, Masks, Vaccines: FAKE. But Corona Virus is real."
Military officials involved in the operation knew their goal was not to protect Filipinos from unsafe vaccines, but to “drag China down into the mud,” a senior officer told Reuters.
The propaganda campaign soon spread beyond the Philippines, according to the source. Muslim audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East were told that Sinovac contained pork gelatin and was therefore “haram,” meaning forbidden under Islamic law. The campaign forced Sinovac to issue a statement asserting that the shot was “made without pig materials.”
The Pentagon has not publicly acknowledged the letter to the Philippine military, and the US and Philippine governments declined to comment on the matter to Reuters.
However, according to RT, last month, a Pentagon spokesperson told the news agency that the US military "uses various platforms, including social media, to counter malign influence attacks against the US, its allies and partners", and claimed that Washington was only responding to "China's disinformation campaign to falsely blame the US for the spread of Covid-19".
China's Foreign Ministry told Reuters that it has long maintained that the United States has been spreading disinformation about China.
RT also said that in the Philippines, Reuters' information prompted the country's Senate Foreign Relations Committee to launch an investigation. During a hearing last month, Senator Imee Marcos, who heads the committee, called the Pentagon's operation "evil, cruel, dangerous [and] unethical," suggesting that Manila investigate whether it could take legal action against Washington.