2023-04-24 02:01:00
They had to stop eating to death if they wanted to see Jesus: what seems like a movie script happened in Kenya, where the leader of an apocalyptic sect managed to convince more than fifty people to surrender to death. Their bodies ended up in mass graves.
As of this Sunday night, there are already 47 bodies found by the Kenyan police buried in mass graves on land owned by Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, self-proclaimed leader of a sect in Kilifi county, on the country’s coast.
Police raided the Shakahola forest after receiving information from 15 defectors from the cult about the deaths of “ignorant citizens starving to death under the pretense of meeting Jesus after being brainwashed by Nthenge.”
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Investigators found at least 32 mass graves on the 323.74-hectare farm (the “sacred grounds”) of the sect leader in the neighboring town of Malindi, of which at least a dozen still remain to be unearthed.
The “pastor” Paul, head of the so-called International Church of Good News (Good News International Church) he says he believes he has spiritual prophetic power and claimed to have seen apparitions of Jesus.
The controversial church was reportedly founded by Mackenzie and his wife, Joys Mwikamba, in 2003, urging followers to fast day and night while leaders enjoyed lavish meals.
Mackenzie Nthengese first turned herself in to police in March, after two children starved to death in front of their parents, members of her sect.
According to investigations, Mackenzie’s house served as the temple of his followers, some of whom are now being investigated for crimes like starving or suffocating their own children and then burying them in shallow graves following Mackenzie’s advice.
“I was shocked to learn that my daughter had starved two of her other children,” lamented Francis Wanje, a Mombasa man whose daughter and son-in-law were followers of MacKenzie, who had allegedly instructed them to fast and attend his sermons.
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“They were not allowed to have water or food as they were supposedly waiting for the return of Jesus,” Wanje said. “The pastor’s messages had convinced them to give up their livelihood and devote themselves entirely to his teachings.”
“My heart broke to pieces thinking about the pain and suffering my grandchildren must have endured before their untimely death,” said Wanje, who managed to find another of her grandchildren “all skin and bones with a protruding belly and ribs.” visible”.
Humphrey Nyongo, former member of the MacKenzie churchstated that Pastor McKenzie “controlled his parishioners” urging them to quit their jobs, stop eating meals and forgo medical treatment when they were sick.
The cult believed that schools and hospitals were demonic, and their leader told them not to take their children to school, but to visit church for life lessons. Mr. Nyongo became suspicious of these instructions and left the church, but it was no easy feat.
“I was a believer in his sermons for 10 years,” Nyongo recounted. “I started to get suspicious. His instructions, which he described as messages from God, were not to take our children to school and instead visit church every day to receive life lessons.”
He recounted: “When I moved to the village from Malindi, I started a poultry farming business, but he was against it. He doesn’t want anyone to get involved in any economic activity or move from the village to the city center.” .
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Salamu Masha, a former member of the MacKenzie Church whose husband is among the 47 killed, told the channel Citizen TV what they were forbidden to read, wash themselves and that treatment in hospitals was frowned upon.
“They asked us to start fasting, and I couldn’t see their children starving and there was food in the house,” she said, before recounting that she managed to escape with her children but her husband decided to stay.
After being released on bail, Mackenzie was arrested again on April 15 and right now – in jail on suspicion of influencing his followers to fast to death – went on hunger strike to protest his treatment, Kenyan daily reports The Nation.
Eleven other members of the sect or their children – the youngest only 17 years old – are admitted in serious condition, three of them in critical condition, after being found languishing in a forest at the beginning of the investigations into the mass graves. .
Titus Katana, a former member of the church, helped the police identify the graves, saying: “We showed the graves to the police and also we saved the life of a woman who only had a few hours left, otherwise she would be dead too.”
One of the tombs is believed to contain the bodies of five members of the same family: three children and their parents.
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In the last few hours, a woman hidden on the farm of the cult leader has been found alive. The woman, according to the Police, is “On the verge of death“, also due to starvation, although she tried to resist the agents who were trying to transfer her to a hospital for urgent medical attention.
“Those we rescued seemed weak, emaciated and with sunken eyes. Some were dehydrated and were vomiting blood. We tried to give them water, but our efforts were useless,” one of the rescuers recounted.
Kenya is a religious country and cases like this where people are lured into dangerous churches or cults that are unregulated.
“This horrendous blemish on our conscience must lead not only to the most severe punishment of the authors of the atrocity committed against so many innocent souls, but also to stricter regulation (including self-regulation) of all churches, mosques, temples and synagogues in the future“said Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki.
According to the Kenyan daily The Standardthe State accuses Mackenzie of “preaching a dangerous doctrine that encourages his followers to starve themselves to get to heaven faster” and “manipulating the locals through extreme religious skewed teachings and fear of the unknown in pursuit of the salvation”.
And he added: “The massacre of the Shakahola forest is the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to religious freedom. Prima facie, large-scale crimes have been committed under Kenyan law and international law.”
The event recalls the largest mass suicide in history that occurred in 1978, when at least 900 people ingested cyanide in Jonestown, a religious community in Guyana created by the American reverend Jim Jones.
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