EXACTLY seven years ago on March 17, 2000, more than 500 people perished in an inferno in Kanungu, south western Uganda...

...Police investigations after the fire discovered mass graves in different parts of the country, raising the death toll to over 1,000.

Those who died included mainly Ugandan and some Congolese believers in a cult called the 'Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God'...

BOOK REVIEW

Patience Atuhaire

Title: The Uganda Cult Tragedy - a private investigation

Author: Bernard Atuhaire

Publisher: Janus Publishing Company, London...

...This book tackles one of those topics most of us would rather not discuss or least of all read about. The Uganda Cult Tragedy - a private investigation develops the reader's curiosity by just looking at it - what with title and also the cover picture, which shows people exhuming bodies. It is a publication about the March 17, 2000, Kanungu cult inferno, that gives even the tiniest details of how this fateful happening, a master plan of The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God alias The Movement came to be.

The text is an in-depth account of the origin, rise and demise of The Movement from its infant years in the early 1980s to the time of the massacre that was masterminded by Credonia Mwerinde, Joseph Kibwetere, Fr. Dominic Kataribaabo and Joseph Kasapuraari...

...Six years ago last Friday, the world awoke to the news of a mass suicide of cult followers in Kanungu in western Uganda. It later turned out that the worshippers in the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, led by Joseph Kibwetere, were murdered in a doomsday inferno...

A NATIONAL False Teaching Awareness Week (March 12 to March 19) has been launched to educate people on the problem of cults in Uganda.

Six years ago last Friday, the world awoke to the news of a mass suicide of cult followers in Kanungu in western Uganda. It later turned out that the worshippers in the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, led by Joseph Kibwetere, were murdered in a doomsday inferno.

Although government authorities immediately swung into action, the leaders still remain at large...

Moses Niwagaba narrowly survived the Kanungu Kibwetere massacre. He told Francis Niwagaba his story...

...I joined the cult because of my uncle's ill advice that the world was ending in 2000...

...Every category of persons existed at the camp. Among others were policemen, teachers (like my uncle), priests, Protestants and Muslims...

Today March 17, marks five years since over 1,000 people were killed in the Kanungu inferno in a church belonging to The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God...

On 17 March 2000, several hundreds members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God (MRTCG) lost their lives in a fire at the movement's headquarters in Southern Uganda. Subsequently, 444 corpses were exhumed at four different locations. A teacher who lost several relatives has written a book in order to share his analysis...

...Kibwetere's Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God killed about 1,000 people in one of the world's worst mass suicides...

...On April 6, 2000 Buganda Road Chief Magistrate's Court issued arrest warrants for six cult leaders.

They included Kibwetere, Ms Credonia Mwerinde and Rev. Fr. Dominic Kataribabo, Rev. Fr. John Mary Kasapurari, Fr John Kamagara and Ms Ursla Komuhangi...

...The Uganda police say they are working with International Police (Interpol) to pursue leading clues, some of which suggest that the cult leaders were sighted in the Kenyan capital Nairobi last year.

The offered Shs 50 million to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the five leaders of the doomsday cult...)

More than 500 members of the Church of the Restoration of the Ten Commandments died when they were locked in a church and set on fire March 17 in Kanungu, Uganda, in what some are calling the world's worst cult massacre...)

Less than two weeks after more than 330 members of a religious group burned to death March 17 inside their church in Kanungu in southwestern Uganda, the estimated number of dead church members surpassed the number of persons who died in the Jonestown tragedy. On March 31 Ugandan police revised the number of people believed to have died in the church fire and in a number of nearby compounds to 924...

The number of deaths linked to a doomsday sect in southwestern Uganda was raised today to 924, surpassing the 913 in 1978 at Jonestown, Guyana, making it the worst modern cult-related mass killing.

Ugandan authorities promised to catch those responsible. But investigators showed no signs of tracking down the leaders of the cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments...

...so she could not really be taken that seriously when she tried to recruit people to her beloved Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God...)

..."The world ends next year. There is no time to waste," Emmanuel Twinomujuni says when asked why he is no longer in school. Twinomujuni, 19, like his colleagues in the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments cult, moves about penniless, looks poverty-stricken and leads a life of hard labour and prayer.

"Some of our leaders talk directly to God. Any minute from now when the end comes, every believer who will be at a yet undisclosed spot will be saved." Twinomujuni says the spot is known only by the cult leaders who talk to God...)

MARGARET WARNER: Investigators are continuing their search for bodies and clues at the compound of a religious cult where hundreds died in an apparent mass suicide last Friday. They perished in a blaze in a hilltop church in the remote village of Kanungu, about 217 miles southwest of the Ugandan capital of Kampala. The cult, called the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, was led by former Roman Catholic priests and nuns. To help us understand the story, we're joined by Shaka Ssali, managing editor for Voice of America's English language service to Africa...)