The Kenya religious starvation cult has been in the headlines for days now. Dozens of dead bodies have been discovered since the police started looking for the victims after receiving a tip-off about a cult led by Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who urged his followers to starve to death in order to find God. The police have found a total of 83 bodies of people who on the instructions of a cult leader starved themselves to “meet God”. The matter has led to shock and anger not just in Kenya, but across the globe. The Kenyan cult leader who told people to starve themselves has been arrested and Good News International Church is being probed.
The Shakahola forest is being combed by the police to search for victims and the discoveries haven’t ended. The police on Tuesday exhumed 10 more bodies from mass graves in the forest, bringing the total number of victims to 83. The 10 bodies recovered on Tuesday included three children. Two emaciated survivors were also found. Officials say the number is likely to increase further.
The shocking Kenya religious starvation cult
Kenyan officials acted on a tip-off earlier this month about shallow graves with dead bodies in a forest. They started searching the Shakahola forest near the coastal town of Malindi. Dozens of corpses have since been exhumed and the grisly discoveries are not expected to end soon. The bodies are of people who reportedly were followers of a Christian cult. They were told by cult leader Paul Mackenzie Nthenge that they will go to heaven and meet God if they starved themselves.
Paul Mackenzie Nthenge surrendered to police following the Shakahola raid. The cult and the associated deaths are being dubbed the “Shakahola Forest Massacre”. Police say that there are several still missing and expect the number of those starving themselves to death to increase.
Officials say that members of the Good News International Church could still be hiding in the bush around Shakahola and are at risk of death if not quickly found. The Kenya Red Cross had earlier said that 212 people had been reported missing to its support staff in Malindi, out of which two were reunited with their families.
Hussein Khalid, executive director of the rights group Haki Africa that tipped off the police, has urged authorities to send more rescuers to search for survivors in the forest.
“Each day that passes by there is a very high possibility that more are dying,” he told AFP.
“The horror that we have seen over the last four days is traumatising. Nothing prepares you for shallow mass graves of children.”
Rescuers are finding bodies squeezed into shallow pits, with up to six people inside one grave. There are other bodies that were simply left outside on the ground.
Survivors are also being found, with 29 people having been rescued and taken to the hospital on Monday.
The fallout of the grisly findings
As rescuers search for survivors and the number of those dead continues to increase, morgues are running out of space to keep the bodies. Authorities at the state-run Malindi Sub-County Hospital warned Tuesday that the morgue was running out of space and already operating well over capacity.
“The hospital mortuary has a capacity of 40 bodies,” said the hospital’s administrator Said Ali. He informed that officials had reached out to the Kenya Red Cross for refrigerated containers.
A day earlier, President William Ruto pledged to crack down on “unacceptable” religious movements in the country. Ruto likened rogue pastors like Nthenge to terrorists. “Terrorists use religion to advance their heinous acts. People like Mr Mackenzie are using religion to do exactly the same thing.”
“I have instructed the agencies responsible to take up the matter and to get to the root cause and to the bottom of the activities of… people who want to use religion to advance a weird, unacceptable ideology.”
Questions emerge over operation of the Kenya religious starvation cult
People are angry and demanding to know how was such a cult operating undetected in Kenya despite Nthenge attracting police attention six years ago. The televangelist was earlier arrested in 2017 on charges of “radicalisation”. He kicked off a conversation about the futility of education at that time and told families not to send their children to school, saying education was not recognised by the Bible.
Nthenge was arrested again last month, local media reports suggest, after two children starved to death in the custody of their parents. He was released on bail of 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($700). That news has made quite a bit of noise, but after his release, Nthenge continued to run the cult. How did no one know about what he was doing?
The Kenya religious starvation cult case will be heard on May 2.
Kenya has had a troubling history of self-declared pastors and cults that have dabbled in criminality. The latest incident of a religious cult asking people to kill themselves has triggered demands for tighter control of fringe denominations in the country.
(With inputs from agencies)
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