CNN Insight

The Killings In Western Uganda

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FIONNUALA SWEENEY, INSIGHT (voice-over): Mass graves, a burned-out church and a cult leader possibly on the run. A remote corner of Uganda is turned into a crime scene, the location of what many are calling one of the biggest mass murders in recent history.

(on camera): Hello, and welcome to INSIGHT. I'm Fionnuala Sweeney in for Jonathan Mann.

They call themselves The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, a millennium cult that first predicted the end of the world on December 31, 1999. That didn't happen, but life has certainly come to a violent end for hundreds of its followers. At first, Ugandan authorities suspected it was mass suicide. Now, they believe it may be something more sinister. On INSIGHT today - the killings in western Uganda.

We begin with this update from CNN's Tim Lister.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TIM LISTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With every passing day, a new atrocity is unearthed. On Wednesday, another 53 victims of this apocalyptic cult were found beneath the floor of a house in a remote area of southwestern Uganda. Half of them were children.

The house was owned by Dominic Kataribabo, one of the leaders of The Movement for Restoration of the Ten Commandments God. This latest discovery brings the number of those murdered to more than 700, many of the children, many bound and strangled or hacked and burned to death. Pathologists are trying to discover whether any of the dead were poisoned. They believe these victims died at least a month ago.

Police suspect the cult may have begun to kill its followers after its prediction that the world would end with the new millennium failed to materialize.

VINCENT MAGOMBE, AFRICA INFORM INTERNATIONAL: I think that one of the reasons why we can see people have been killed over a period of time was that the people must have tried, at a certain point, to start rebelling. You remember that they collected a lot of their money. They told them to sell their things. And I think that at a certain point, some of them started questioning their leaders and others wanted to run away. So these people decided to kill them and to try and hide evidence by killing as many as possible.

LISTER: The first evidence of what has now become a case of mass murder emerged at a rural chapel on March 17. At least 300 people were burned to death when the chapel was set ablaze, its doors locked to prevent escape.

A few days later, more than 150 bodies were found buried in the village of Buhunga in a compound belonging to the sect. More were discovered in a field, again hacked to death or strangled. Stunned onlookers held rags or twigs of cypress to their faces to ward off the stench of decomposing corpses.

Then came the latest search of Kataribabo's house, yielding yet more horror. The dead have been found in three locations near the border with Rwanda at Buhunga, Kanungu and Rugazi.

But other compounds used by the cult have yet to be searched. So why did so many people fall under the spell of this self-styled movement?

MAGOMBE: The victims are people who are in a country that is totally poor. They come from villages where there's abject poverty. Diseases like AIDS has wiped out some villages, and these people have no other institution within the country to fall back to. And so they're very vulnerable, and that's where they were found to be corrupted in this movement.

LISTER: Ugandan police have contacted Interpol for help in the search for five cult leaders. They may be among the dead, but the authorities believe they have fled.

A Roman Catholic, Dominic Kataribabo had studied theology in California. He later clashed with his bishop in Uganda and was stripped of his duties. He then joined the sect and was last seen on March 12, reportedly after selling his house.

But the Ugandan police are ill equipped for such an investigation. Many bodies were buried without examination. People have wandered unhindered in and out of crime scenes. The country has just one police pathologist who says he lacks the resources to carry out autopsies. And there is one police car in this district of nearly a million people.

The exact number of victims, the sequence of events, even the fate of the cult's leaders may remain as mysterious as The Movement for the Restoration of The Ten Commandments itself.

Tim Lister, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SWEENEY: Well, CNN's Catherine Bond is in western Uganda and joins us now. Catherine, what have you been hearing?

CATHERINE BOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, today, police were again at the site of Rugazi of Dominic Kataribabo's house, and basically, they were unearthing more bodies from the floor of his house. The way it seems, there's a very large number of people who have been strangled, which has led to a number of questions being asked here as to how and who did the strangling. How can you strangle so many people?

And one of the theories is that some members of the cult were sort of, in a way, led to believe that they deserved to be punished and punished in such a way that they might even die. And this made them acquiesce, to some extent, to this kind of brutal behavior. A lot of children were killed, and that means that a lot of sort of isolation of children had gone on within the cult for a number of years.

And it's believed that particularly Cledonia, who was the sort of priestess of the group, was anti-child and had separated mothers from their children and husbands from their wives and basically isolated relatives from each other so that she could carry out this sort of thing.

So I think it's a very bizarre happening. It's not at all Ugandan. It's extremely unusual. It's never happened here before on this scale. And people are very puzzled by it and very alarmed that, you know, such a kind of wacky cult could have sprung up and behaved in such a way.

SWEENEY: Now, do police expect to find more bodies or do they believe they have, at least, seen every compound where bodies might be held?

BOND: No, they feel there's another five sites which they haven't examined properly, and I understand they're going back to one of the previous sites to reexamine it because they think there may be even more bodies that they haven't yet discovered even at Kanungu, which is the site which has been gone over time and time again because that was the original church compound where the fire occurred and where the first members of these cults were found to have been killed.

SWEENEY: Many of these deaths happened about a month ago. How is it that so many people could have been killed and no one within the community or the neighborhood could have heard about it?

BOND: That question's been asked time and time again, and it elicits no valid answer. Essentially, it seems people - local people seem to say, this sect was silent. The members of it wouldn't talk to you. We didn't know what was going on. But there's also a question as to whether, for example, some of the priests' relatives should have been taken into custody and questioned by the police because they certainly did know something about what their uncle was up to.

No, it doesn't give any clear answer. You can't - it's very difficult to work out whether people are frightened to tell you, whether they're frightened because they don't want the police to pick them up and interrogate them, whether they're frightened because they've been intimidated in some way by members of the sect, whether they genuinely knew nothing about what was going on.

We asked all the villagers around the house, "Did you never hear screams or cries? Did you never hear the sound of digging or burying?" And none of them seemed to - you know, to seem to come up with a positive response. No, there seems to be a kind a wall of silence when you ask that particular question, and it's very difficult to determine why nobody has picked up on this before.

SWEENEY: CNN's Catherine Bond in western Uganda.

Now, in a moment, a community transformed - we'll speak to someone who knows the area well about the changes brought by this sect. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SWEENEY: Welcome back. The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God had up to 1,000 followers. Many of them are now dead, and a remote part of rural Uganda that's been described as a pleasant community is suddenly seeing an influx of people and police and detectives, as well as forensic scientists.

Shaka Ssali is the managing editor of the Voice of America's English service to Africa. He is Ugandan by birth, hailing from a village close to the scene of the tragedy.

How surprising or shocking is something like this in Uganda?

SHAKA SSALI, VOICE OF AMERICA: Well, it's absolutely shocking. I mean, there's no question about it. Everyone you talk to you find that they are dumbfounded. Some of them tell you that this is, frankly, not something they expected to happen in Uganda. They actually add on to say that these are the sort of things that they had come to expect to happen - guess where? In the United States of America. And they talk about incidents such as Waco.

SWEENEY: And tell us about this region in western Uganda. What kind of community would have existed there?

SSALI: Well, first of all, the community is - you know, it's a gorgeous place, with lush green. You have mountains all around the place. And it's a very fertile area where, you know, peasant farmers cultivate bananas. They cultivate beans and potatoes and that kind of stuff.

These are law-abiding citizens. These are people also who are very much religious in the sense that they have a lot of trust and they believe in their neighborhood priest, the parish priest, as it were. You have a lot of Catholics and a lot of Protestants African (ph), if you will. And especially in Kanungu, we also have a segment of the Muslim community.

These are people, frankly, who were taken on a ride. And of course, one of my colleagues pointed out earlier in this segment, people are going through, I think, socially and economically trying times. They're situations where people get so much frustrated to the extent that they begin waiting for a "Moses" to sort of deliver them to Canaan, so to speak, at least economically.

SWEENEY: So you think the area was quite ripe for a cult, such as we've seen, to exist?

SSALI: It's quite possible that that might be one of the theories that one could look into. You also have to look at the fact that for some strange reason, the cult leaders were extremely sophisticated people, very highly educated with an advanced Western education. I'm told, for example, that Dominic Kataribabo actually got a masters degree in theology from somewhere in California.

And you have people like Joseph Kibwetere, a man who was widely respected by a lot of people in area called Washamede (ph), where he comes from. But in 1980, he apparently ran as a candidate for the Ugandan parliament on the democratic party ticket and lost to a gentleman called (INAUDIBLE) of the Uganda's People's Congress. He also is a man that tried his hand at; you know, at establishing private, you know, educational institutions.

He's a man also who did very well until he joined the cult as a priest. So this is a man who clearly is very much believed in, a person that is widely respected. Nobody, frankly, would have suspected that such a thing would happen.

I talked earlier with a Uganda member of parliament, Brigadier James Kazini, in whose constituency, one of the tragedies occurred, in fact, is Buhunga, an area where about 153 people died, where they were actually murdered. And he told me - he said, "You know, Shaka, nobody - nobody in my area, nobody in this town, in this community, believe that those respectable people could have pulled off this."

I also talked to the Ugandan justice minister, (INAUDIBLE), who told me he was a personal friend. Actually, they were very close friends with Mr. Kataribabo. And Mr. Kataribabo, he told me, he even performed some ceremony during Mr. Kataribabo's wedding. He told me that this was a man who was widely respected in the community. He's a guy that you could have trusted with your kid.

SWEENEY: And how do you think organized religions - for example, as you said, one of the leaders was a former priest - but how do you think this cult was tolerated by the Roman Catholic Church and other organized religions in the region?

SSALI: Well, first of all, you have to accept the fact that the Catholic Church is very highly disciplined, especially in Uganda where I come from. And of course, if you look at Northern Ireland and what have you, you've got people who generally are well trained, very highly disciplined, people who follow whatever kind of instructions they are given.

There's a possibility that the followers of this cult were dissatisfied at some point with what one would characterize as the traditional religions, and that is the Catholic and the Anglican Church. They probably found them very conservative, and they probably found that these cults were accommodative, they are flexible and was, therefore, very easy to follow. You have a guy who tells you, hey, you know, if you can do this for me and what have you, you have a date with the Virgin Mary, and before you know it, you'll be in heaven.

SWEENEY: Finally, do you think you'll ever - we'll ever know what actually happened here?

SSALI: It's very difficult, frankly, to think in that direction because as you know, most of the evidence has already been destroyed. It has been buried. I understand that the Ugandan government is to be getting some support from the United States through the FBI because I think you do need some technical expertise here.

You need people who can use the DNA technology. You need the forensic experts to try and figure out, at least in terms of the numbers. But I doubt that we shall really, at any one time, know the final figure. But I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the day, we have a figure that is either equal to that of Jim Jones in Jamestown, Guyana, 1978. That was 914. As I talked to some journalists in Kampala, they told me that the final toll, frankly, could be anywhere between 900 and 1,000.

SWEENEY: All right. We'll have to wait and see. But thank you very much, indeed, for joining us, Shaka Ssali in Washington, D.C. We've got to take another break now. But coming up - movements and the mind. We will look at the attraction of cults.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SWEENEY (voice-over): Five years ago this month, the Japanese Doomsday sects released nerve gas in the Tokyo subway. Twelve people died, and thousands were sickened. The group's leader, Shoko Asahara, is on trial for masterminding the Sarin gas attack.

(on camera): Members of the Aum Shinrikyo sect have recently distanced themselves from Shoko Asahara. In January, they said he would no longer serve as their leader. They also changed the name of their group to "Alef." But many Japanese remain suspicious of the group and its intentions.

Steve Hassan is the founder of the Resource Center for Freedom of Mind, an educational organization which studies cults. He runs a Web site, www.freedomofmind.com. He's also the author of an upcoming book, "Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves."

First of all, you yourself were involved in a cult. Briefly, how did that happen, and how did you get out of it?

STEVEN HASSAN, CULT COUNSELOR: Well, in 1974, when I was 19, I was deceptively recruited into a destructive mind control cult and wound up believing that Sun Myung Moon was the Messiah, that World War III, Armageddon would happen in 1977. And I came to cut off from my family and friends. And I worked for two and half years, seven days a week, sleeping only three to four hours a night.

SWEENEY: And what happened? At what point did you realize that this may not have been good for you or this no longer suited you or that you wanted out?

HASSAN: Well, I basically fell asleep at the wheel of a Moonie fundraising van and broke my leg in an automobile accident, which enabled my family to find me, and they did a deprogramming, which lasted five days. And I should say I come from a conservative Jewish family, and on the fourth day of the deprogramming, I was saying things like, "I don't care if Moon is like Hitler. I've chosen to follow him, and I'll follow him to the end."

Fortunately, I woke up the next day and I started my quest, which is now 23 years, to teach the public what I learned is a very valuable lesson - that intelligent, educated people can be hypnotized, can be mind-controlled. And better yet, that people can be rescued from these things without force.

SWEENEY: Indeed, I was going to ask you that. I mean, looking back now, are you surprised and shocked that you were so susceptible to this?

HASSAN: Well, I had just broken up with a girlfriend, and I was approached by three attractive women who were pretending to be students on my college campus. And I knew nothing about cults in 1974. And I've gone on to do many, many hundreds of cases.

I actually did a case with a man in his late 60s, a devout Catholic, who was taken over by a woman who claimed to be a mystic. And we wound up working with the Catholic Church in order to do an intervention and help him get away from this woman. It sounds like the cult in Uganda was a similar - cut from a similar cloth.

SWEENEY: I was going to ask you if there is, in your opinion, a typical profile of a cult or a typical profile of an individual that might be encouraged or coerced to join one.

HASSAN: Well, certainly situational variables make people more vulnerable, such as breaking up in a relationship, changing jobs, moving to a new city, state or country, or poverty, certainly will make people more susceptible.

But my experience and my research for 23 years says that if you can isolate a person, if you can disorient them, if you can control their behavior, their information, their thinking and their emotions, you can pretty much take them over and make them completely dependent. And this particular group, the more I learn about it, seems to have been doing classic mind control techniques to make their members dependent.

SWEENEY: Is there a difference between a cult and an alternative religious group?

HASSAN: Well, my whole model is based on behaviors, and I say that a group can be political in orientation, could be a business, could be a therapy group, or it could be a religious group. But if they're using deceptive recruitment so people are not making informed choices and if they control their behavior, information, thinking and emotions - and I have a very extensive outline of this on my Web site, I should add - then they're doing mind control.

And so we can look at whole continuum of different groups and different variables. Clearly, when a group is told that members can't speak negative words, they can't think negative thoughts, they're given phobias that if they ever leave the group, they'll be losing their salvation. As long as these people are isolated from the outside world, they're incredibly vulnerable to exploitation.

And I'd just like to say that I'm a little bit disturbed by the Catholic Church Archbishop's comments, if they are accurately reported in the media, that the Catholic Church has no responsibility, he said. And that they shouldn't feel guilty. In my work and in my book "Releasing the Bonds," I believe that it's everyone's responsibility to keep reaching out to people involved with mind control cults and break down the isolation that cult leaders want to maintain of their members. And I certainly believe that we need to have a very compassionate response to the victims here, many of whom were children.

SWEENEY: How do you begin to deprogram someone's who has been in a cult?

HASSAN: Well, I want to make a distinction that what I do is not deprogramming. It's not abduction or holding people against their will. I advocate a strategic communications approach. And for example, I have a three-stage phobia intervention in which you can undermine the indoctrinated phobias in order to help a person to realize that they do have choices, that they can leave if - if it's a religious group, for example - and still believe in God and be happy and fulfilled.

But there's also other critical mind control techniques that I need to explain to the people in cults. But when you're in a cult, you don't think you're in a cult. You think other groups are cults, but not the one you're in. And what I found is, is that rather than confront a person and tell them they're in a cult, what you should first do is explain what another group is doing as far as mind control and why they are a destructive cult and then ask how their group is different from that one.

So in this case, if I was meeting someone involved with the cult that was still alive, I would be asking them about Jim Jones and People's Temple or Applewhite and Heaven's Gate or Aum Shinrikyo and Shoko Asahara and showing them that any group that is dismantling critical thinking is undermining their God-given free will.

SWEENEY: Steve Hassan, now we have to leave it. But thank you very much, indeed, for joining us.

And that is this edition of INSIGHT. I'm Fionnuala Sweeney. Stay tuned because the news continues. END

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