French to dynamite huge guru statue

CASTELLANE, France, Sept 5, 2001 (Reuters) - Police prepared on Wednesday to
blow up a mammoth white statue [photos

] of a self-proclaimed messiah that has towered
over a small village in southeastern France for more than a decade.

Security forces cleared out the hilltop headquarters of the Golden Lotus
cult before dawn and explosive experts started laying charges to destroy the
sculpture of sect founder Gilbert Bourdin, otherwise known as His Holiness
Lord Hamsah Manarah.

Cult followers have compared the planned demolition of the 33-metre (110 ft)
high statue to the recent destruction in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime
of 1,500-year old colossal Buddhist statues.

French authorities say the Castellane monument was built in 1990 without
planning permission and say they will fell it within the next 24 hours.

Bourdin, who also called himself the Cosmoplanetary Messiah of Synthesis,
the Great Master of the Order of the Knights of the Triumphant Vajra, the
Master of the Selection of Souls and the Great Pontiff of the Cosmic Diamond
Order, claimed to be immortal. He died of heart disease in 1998 aged 74.

He founded his "Aumism" movement in 1969 as a synthesis of all religions and
created the "holy city of Mandarom" above the village of Castellane in
France's picturesque Haute Provence, some 50 km (30 miles) northwest of the
Riveria resort of Cannes.
(...)

Looking a bit like a Disneyland theme park, Mandarom is littered with
statues and temples.

The only unauthorised building on the site is the monumental statue of
Bourdin, which shows the guru resplendent in white robes and a papal-style
tiara. His eyes glow in the dark and a Hindu bindi on the forehead blinks at
night.

Local environmental groups complained that the effigy was an eyesore and a
court ruled in June that it had to be destroyed.
(...)

Sect members had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights against the
decision to destroy the statue, but local officials have not waited for a
ruling from the court.

Bourdin's followers believe their founder will one day be resurrected from a
local grave. Town officials covered over the burial site with a thick layer
of reinforced concrete to prevent his supporters from digging up his body.
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