Hi Folks,
This is from the Observer, the stablemate of the Guardian. Have a nice
reading.
Hamjatta
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Cult that can't stop killing
As the Uganda mass suicide is relabelled murder, police are hunting surviving
sect leaders. Anna Borzello reports
Sunday March 26, 2000
The death toll in the horrific relgious cult massacre in Uganda reached more
than 480 last night after 153 bodies were uncovered in three mass graves.
These finds intensified a police search for surviving members of the Movement
for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God who may know what
happened.
The graves containing the slashed and strangled bodies - including those of
59 children - were discovered in a building used as a transit camp by the
group of former Roman Catholics in Rukingeri District, in the West of the
country.
The fresh discoveries were made one week after at least 330 members of the
cult burnt to death in a fire at their headquarters at Kanungu, 30 miles from
the transit camp.
The sect members were initially thought to have entered the church on 17
March, doused themselves in petrol and set themselves alight. They were
reported to have believed that the Virgin Mary was coming to take them to
heaven. Police say they are now treating the deaths as murder and not mass
suicide.
Shocked Ugandans are struggling to make sense of the killings, particularly
as the sect was barely known before it so dramatically seized the headlines.
The cult was founded in the late Eighties by a former Roman Catholic teacher
and opposition politician, Joseph Kibwetere. He claimed to have regular
visions of Jesus and Mary. Kibwetere built a following and gained credibility
when a learned Catholic churchman, Father Dominic Katarabaabo, joined.
In 1993, the group registered as an non-governmental organisation, a status
given to charities, and set up a community near Kanungu on 10 acres of land
donated by one of its principal 'prophets', Credonia Mwerinde.
By the late Nineties, the community was thriving, growing bananas, pineapples
and sugar cane. Members lived in dormitores, ate together and sent their
children to the sect's own school.
Converts were told to sell their property when they joined, and give the
proceeds to the leaders. Once in the commune they lived in dormitories and
were instructed not to have sex. They wore green and white robes, and were
given cult identity cards.
They prayed and sang for hours, but had to communicate in sign language for
the rest of the time for fear of breaking one of the the commandments by
bearing false witness. They were discouraged from mixing with locals, who
described the followers as polite and disciplined. By the time of the fire,
the sect had about 4,000 members.
Jane Kyomakama, a roadside food seller, was approached by the cult last year,
and agreed to attend a course in the capital, Kampala. 'Credonia Mwerinda
told us the world was coming to end. She said if we joined we would not die
in a fire,' Kyomakama said.
Credonia asked her to donate about £130 - a huge sum in Uganda. Kyomakama
decided something was amiss, and left.
The sect had believed the world would end at the beginning of this year. When
this proved false, some members are reported to have doubted their leaders -
who promptly rescheduled it for 16 March.
At the beginning of March, Credonia Mwerinda told Kyomakama that the Virgin
Mary was coming to take the cult members to heaven.
Another sect leader, Father Dominic, also turned up in Kampala saying Mary
was on her way. He paid off his debts, and bought two jerry cans of car
battery acid - a substance found on some of the bodies.
Sect members from across Uganda also began to put their affairs in order. In
the second week of March, neighbours of the sect's small Kampala branch were
offered followers' personal property at giveaway prices.
'They sold off their chickens. They sold off sofas and sideboards,' said John
Ntwatawa, who looked after the branch's house. 'They left it completely
empty.'
What happened next is not clear. On 13 March followers from sect branches
convered on Kanungu.
The following day, there were baptisms for all those who had not been through
the ceremony before. As thousands of people gathered in the community church,
their leaders allayed any suspicions of what was to happen by inviting the
local authorities to a party to inaugurate the church on 18 March.
On 17 March cult members feasted before delivering the deeds of any property
they owned to the police.
The following morning they gathered in the sect's old church - known as their
'ark' - to find the doors and windows boarded up. Their leaders apparently
said this to keep out sinners who might storm the building.
A woman visiting her mother nearby saw the leaders usher children into the
church amid singing inside. Then she heard an explosion, ran to the building
to peer in, and saw people 'in agony'.
Police found bodies still smouldering two days after the fire. They were
burnt, twisted and charred. Some were in attitudes of terror, heads thrown
back and arms shielding their bodies from the flames. Around 330 bodies were
counted, but police believe nearly 500 people died.
The initial suspicion of mass suicide altered when officers found six bodies,
burnt with battery acid in a latrine inside a building used by the sect
leaders.
The discovery of mass graves at the transit camp last Friday further
reinforced the view that the members had been murdered, perhaps as part of a
ritual or because of a dispute with their leaders.
In the week after the fire, police became increasingly convinced that the
sect leaders could be alive, but Father Katarabaabo's charred body was found
by the church entrance, his dog-collar seared into his flesh. Mwerinda and
Kibwetere were seen leaving Kanungu on the day of the fire.
Ugandans are struggling to understand how the sect survived for so long
without the the police shutting it. Two others were banned last year.
President Yoweri Museveni, who has ordered an inquiry into the killings,
blames the country's poverty and rampant Aids epidemic.
'People start looking for answers in the realm of metaphysics because there
is no answer in real life,' he said.
hkanteh
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