Uganda Struggles To Understand Deadly Cult
They came to this quiet village from across the luxuriant green hills of southwestern Uganda, some seeking something to believe in, others the comfort of a home and still others the shared joy of speeding to Heaven when the world stopped.
Most were Roman Catholics grown dissatisfied with their church or simply drawn to the movement by ties of blood. But all became dupes of swindlers who pried loose their possessions with assurances of a place in Paradise, authorities say.
The promise of happiness proved deadly in the hands of what Uganda's vice president called "diabolic, malevolent criminals masquerading as holy and religious people."
Completely frustrated and overwhelmed, police investigators have suspended further digging in the Ugandan cult murder. Any help is welcomed in order to carry on with the digging.
Under equipped, overwhelmed and utterly exhausted, Uganda's police force lack proper resources to further the investigations of the March 17 fire that burned hundreds of cult members to death.
Uganda's cash-strapped police have struggled to keep up with the discovery of hundreds more hacked, strangled bodies in pits. Falling behind so badly that they are considering a formal international appeal for the most basic gear such as rubber gloves.
"We would welcome any help," police spokesman Eric Naigambi said Wednesday, after a cult investigations group in the United States made one of the few offers of assistance. "We do not mind, because after all, the whole world is watching."
Police commander Freddie Kayima had waited long enough for Uganda's top cops to make it to his patch of the western jungle, where a cult site in Swese and its ominous secrets stood unstudied. Growing impatient and utterly unequipped, he decided to go it alone in the world's largest current murder investigation. But once at the site, all he could do was look.
His superiors had suspended digging entirely because of press criticism for putting bare-handed jail inmates to work exhuming the sect's corpses.
The government said the search would resume only when investigators had proper protective gear.
In any case, "there's not much to see now," chief police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi said Wednesday.
Tests on bodies already exhumed from mass graves were to start Wednesday, said A.B.M Lugudo, deputy commissioner for Uganda's forensics agency.
But so far, forensics tests showed Tuesday the 530 people whose charred bodies were recovered after a doomsday cult's fiery climax were still alive when their gasoline-soaked.
The doors and windows of the chapel were bolted from the outside, the preliminary investigation findings confirmed.
"It was an attack from the inside," said A.B.M. Lugudo, deputy commissioner of Uganda's forensics agency.
Investigators have yet to determine if whoever set the fire died with the victims, but their suspicions have been aroused by three, less badly burned corpss found in a separate room of the sect church at Kanungu, Lugudo said.
Until the police finish their reports, any prosecutions which Ugandans are crying out for will not take place.
Meanwhile, taking place on the other side of the world, where 22 years ago, cult leader Jim Jones mass murdered 1,000 members in Jonestown, Guyana, memories stired up for those who survived and whose family members did not.
In California, Jynona Norwood flashes back 22 years to another utopia gone hellishly wrong, to Jonestown, where her mother and 26 other family members died.
"Yes, it does jerk me back and it does bring back emotional pain which you never really get over," she says. "It just makes my journey a little more urgent. How many more children have to die?"
For Deborah Layton, who fled Jonestown just before the killings, the mysterious Movement for Restoration of the Ten Commandments in Uganda is also reminiscent.
"Nobody joins a cult. You join a self-help group, a religious movement, a political organization," Layton says. "They change so gradually, by the time you realize you're entrapped and almost everybody does you can't figure a safe way back out."
The similarities are striking. Both happened in remote tropical locations. Both were led by charismatic leaders who offered a better way. Both took so many lives, the toll lurches into the surreal.