Cult used radio to spread word
BBC News, March 31, 2000
The Ugandan Doomsday cult was broadcasting its own brand of spiritual programmes on a local FM radio right up to the discovery of the group's first victims.
Uganda's The New Vision newspaper said the cult leaders spread their Ten Commandments teachings on Voice of Toro, a commercial FM station based in Fort Portal, near the border with DR Congo.
The cult leaders started running the programmes in early December. They continued until the week preceding the murders of at least 600 followers at the group's church in Kanungu on 17 March.
Rev Fr Kasapurari, an excommunicated Catholic priest, preached the cult's doctrine of the apocalypse and recorded the programmes "in his own sharp voice", the newspaper said.
He is believed to have made the programmes at his home near Kitabi Seminary in Bushenyi district.
An official from the radio station told the newspaper that all the programmes were paid for, including one that was to be broadcast on 17 March.
'Purely religious'
"We did not find any criminal material in them," station manager Perez Tinkasimire told the paper."It was purely religious, stressing the Ten Commandments philosophy. I'm an Anglican but I liked the way these people preached." The programmes were run only "after serious consideration", he added. Listeners want to buy the programme tapes but the radio has not granted this.
The cult leaders, now wanted by Ugandan police on criminal charges, paid 70,000 shillings ($46) for each 10-15 minute programme. They ran three times a week, recorded in the local dialect. At the time of the massacre, the cult leaders, led by Joseph Kibwetere, had spent over 3m shillings (,000) on the programmes. The Voice of Toro reaches a large part of the eastern border areas of DR Congo. It also acts as a rebroadcaster for the BBC and Voice of America.
