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Religion News Report - March 19, 2001 (Vol. 5, Issue 337)
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=== Aum Shinrikyo
1. Aum Doomsday Cult Shadows Japan
2. Key Members of the Aum Cult

=== Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God
3. Uganda Cult Mass Murder Anniversary
4. Up in smoke or into thin air? Uganda's killer cult leaders a year on

=== Ho-no-hana Sanpogyo
5. Taxman sinks boot into foot cult
6. Bureaus put foot down over Honohana taxes
7. Foot cult leader failed to declare 750 million yen in income

=== Falun Gong
8. Girl Set Ablaze in Tiananmen Dies
9. Exhibition Targeting Falun Gong Begins in Hong Kong
10. Falun Gong puts spotlight on HK civil servants
11. Analysis: US, China still clash on Falun Gong

=== Scientology
12. Threat of Scientologists' Legal Wrath Prompts Slashdot to Censor a Posting
13. Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot
14. Slashdot buckles to Scientology loonies
15. Xenu Do, But Not on Slashdot
16. Holy? Or wholly without grounds

=== Buddhism
17. 'Buddha's hair' found in China

=== Islam
18. 400 Afghan clerics decided to destroy statues: Minister
19. Taliban Ways Under Question

=== Catholicism
20. Italy threatens to silence Vatican [Radio]
21. Few confessions

=== Mormonism
22. SLOC and the LDS Church downplay the church's involvement in the Olympics
23. From SLOC Leadership to Liquor, Church Has Long Had a Powerful Olympic Voice
24. Special Treatment for the Church?
25. Non-LDS Religious Leaders Cite Minimal Input
26. Courting Controversy
27. Sex change worshipper sues the Mormons

=== Hate Groups
28. Bertollini sues Coeur d'Alene newspaper
29. Parade foes to put best foot forward
30. Report Links Putin to Anti-Semitism
31. Estee Lauder's latest tangle
32. What's in a Name?

=== False Memory Syndrome
33. Jury awards family millions

=== Faith Healing
34. Senate Panel Backs Faith-Healing Ban When Kids At Risk
35. Mandatory medical aid for sick kids gets committee OK

=== Other News
36. Atheist leader's remains found on Texas ranch
37. China Extends Cult Crackdown to Protestants, Says Rights Group
38. Sect Not Allowed to Build Cult Hall [Universal Church of the Kingdom of God]
39. Man Shot Dead As Bulletproof Magic Fails
40. Moscow police make arrest in multiple murder
41. Poles rethink anti-sect moves after minority church complaints
42. Appeals court says Ohio motto is acceptable

=== Faith-Based & Community Initiatives
43. Conservatives call for ouster of director of faith-based charities


=== Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God

3. Uganda Cult Mass Murder Anniversary
AP, Mar. 16, 2001
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
(...) A ghostly silence hangs over the burned-out hall and the tidy, solid houses where the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God prayed and sang.
(...)

Today, people in the hilly corner of southwestern Uganda say the place is haunted by the ghosts of their friends and relatives.

''As dusk approaches, we see figures of people moving up and down as they used to do before they were killed in the fire. They put on the same red and blue uniforms,'' said 18-year-old Deus Tweyongere, whose aunt and four cousins perished in the inferno.

Police still guard the site, and officially the investigation continues. But authorities seem to have little prospect of tracking down the alleged cult leaders, Joseph Kibwetere, defrocked Catholic priest Dominic Kataribaabo and a woman named Cledonia Mwerinde, who passed herself off as a nun.

Uganda is a poor country. Its police have no access to computer databases that might link them to neighboring countries where at least one suspect has been seen. They even lack gasoline for their few vehicles.

''The investigations are not easy, and we were not successful,'' said national police spokesman Asuman Mugenyi. ''We only got air.''

He said Kataribaabo was seen last year in Rwanda, at the camp of a different cult, and then in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Mwerinde, who once ran a bar, was seen in a village in southwestern Uganda. No one has seen Kibwetere, and many believe he could have perished in the fire.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


4. Up in smoke or into thin air? Uganda's killer cult leaders a year on
AFP, Mar. 16, 2001
http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A year after more than 700 Ugandans died at the hands of a doomsday cult, authorities remain uncertain whether the group's leaders were among those who perished in the flames or have simply disappeared.

''We haven't picked up much more on the authors of these acts or about their whereabouts,'' Internal Security Organisation chief Brigadier Ivan Koreta told AFP about the leaders of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God.
(...)

''Our search most likely seems to point to them having gone up in flames as well... The trail is getting a bit cold now but we keep on trying to learn as much as we can,'' added Koreta.
(...)

Police said at the time that they believed that the three principle cult leaders -- former bar girl Credonia Mwerinde, Joseph Kibwetere and their principle apostle Dominic Kataribaabo -- had died along with their followers.
(...)

Within hours of the blaze, reports began to trickle in of Credonia being seen driving away from Kanungu in a pick-up truck.

Police issued arrest warrants for six cult leaders through Interpol, and these remain active.

''There were not really any leads,'' police spokesman Assuman Mugenyi told AFP.

''We keep on getting information and we would check and then we find nothing. Last year we got information that Katirabaabo was in Nairobi. We sent our people and couldn't get him.

''Then they said Kibwetere had been seen in Kisumu in Kenya. We despatched our police but we were chasing air,'' Mygenyi added.

The proximity of Kanungu to the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo has fuelled continuing rumours of the cult leaders' successful flight.
(...)

Police still do not know exactly how the killings took place, although they are clearer about the methods used.

''We know that in the church the people died from an explosion caused by lit petrol, not by bombs as earlier alleged. These people had put so many lit containers of petrol around the church,'' Mugenyi told AFP.

Pathology reports revealed that those who were found buried in the cult buildings had first been poisoned by eating contaminated food.

''Those who took time to die were strangled, but they had already been weakened by the poison in the food,'' Mugenyi said.

Police have also now established that those found in mass graves were killed four to six weeks before the Kanungu blaze, ending speculation that they were murdered at the turn of the millennium when a prophecy that the world would end failed to come true.

One year on little has been discovered about the motives behind the killings.
Theories range from greed: cult members sold off their belongings at give-away prices before they died; to simple post-millennial madness.

Investigations have been hampered by the government's apparent disinterest.

The severely under-funded police admitted at the time that they lacked the means to handle the inquiry, while a government commission into the massacres never got off the ground for want of finance.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]
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