-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Saturday March 18 1:44 PM ET Up to 230 Die in Uganda Cult Suicide KAMPALA (Reuters) - Up to 230 members of a Ugandan Doomsday cult have set themselves ablaze in their church, police said on Saturday, taking their lives in the world's second biggest mass suicide of recent times. Followers of the obscure ``Ten Commandments of God'' sect gathered in a church 200 miles southwest of the capital Kampala on Friday, a police spokesman told Reuters. They set themselves on fire after several hours of chanting and singing. ``Prior to this incident their leader told believers to sell off their possessions and prepare to go to Heaven,'' the spokesman said. Police put the death toll between 100 and 230, but said they were having difficulty counting the bodies which were burned beyond recognition. ``There were families inside, even small children,'' Jonathan Turyareeda, a local police officer, told Reuters. Further details from the remote area were not immediately available. The church is not far north of Rwanda, where 800,000 people were slaughtered in the 1994 genocide, or from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the armies of six African states have been sucked into a messy civil war. A former British colony once called the Pearl of Africa for its fertile soil and plentiful rains, Uganda became a byword for African horrors during the 1971-79 dictatorship of Idi Amin, whose regime killed up to 500,000 opponents and expelled 70,000 people of Asian origin. More bloodshed followed, often on ethnic lines, until guerrilla leader Yoweri Museveni won power in 1986, restoring relative peace. But an extreme Christian cult, the Holy Spirit Movement, sprang up among northern ethnic groups in the late 1980s. Many hundreds of believers died in suicidal attacks, believing that magic oil would protect them from the bullets of Museveni's troops. Its successor, the Lord's Resistance Army, is still pursing a guerrilla war, kidnapping large numbers of boys and girls to serve as soldiers and sex slaves and dodging back and forth across the border with southern Sudan, which has a long running civil war of its own. Other disaffected guerrillas operate from bases in the eastern Congo, which is the main reason Museveni, who comes from the southwest, gives for sending his troops across the border to support anti-Kinshasa rebels. Last September, police in central Uganda disbanded another Doomsday cult, the 1,000-member ``World Message Last Warning'' sect. The cult's leaders were charged with rape, kidnapping and illegal confinement. Along with its political, religious and ethnic troubles Uganda has one of the world's highest rates of infection with AIDS. Museveni's government has tackled the deadly disease with a forthrightness rare among African governments, slowing its spread through a grassroots campaign of public awareness. The largest mass suicide of recent times took place in 1978 when a paranoid U.S. pastor, the Reverend Jim Jones, led 914 followers to their deaths at Jonestown, Guyana, by drinking a cyanide-laced fruit drink. Cult members who refused to swallow the liquid were shot. Jones had carved a sign over his altar at Jonestown, reading ''Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.'' In recent years there have been several smaller group suicides in Europe and North America, three of them involving the Solar Temple, an international sect that believes death by ritual suicide leads to rebirth. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
