103 Dead in Kenya From a Mass Starvation Cult Practice
Pastor Ezekiel Odero, holding a bible, while being led by the police in Mombasa, Kenya on Thursday. Photo: Maarufu Mohamed/AP News.
Last week police in Kenya arrested Ezekiel Odero, a pastor involved in the deaths of 103 people who participated in starvation cult practices. Followers were led to believe they would go to heaven if they starved themselves. The Kenyan Red Cross said 314 people were reported missing in light of the recent events.
According to a Tuesday statement by Kithure Kindiki, the Kenyan Interior Minister, Odero alongside Pastor Paul Mackenzie “are facing criminal charges related to mass killing of their followers.” Japhet Koome, the national police chief, said 14 other cult members of the Good News International Church were in custody.
Both pastors are preachers for the controversial Good News International Church, which has subjected them to previous arrests inciting radicalization for urging children to not go to school in 2017 and 2019. They asked their followers to follow them to their nearly 800-acre farm in a village, Shakahola, in the southeast of Kenya. They were led there for a fast to “meet Jesus.”
Mackenzie was a known televangelist in Kenya after the founding of Good News International Church in the coastal town, Malindi, in 2003. The church grew to have multiple branches across the country.
In 2019, he closed the church in Nairobi and moved to Shakahola, due to previous allegations for teaching children to stop pursuing formal education. He also created a YouTube channel, where he gained over 400,000 subscribers and 70 million views.
According to Aljazeera, “he instructed his followers to quit their jobs, drop out of formal schools, stop feeding on “worldly food” and not seek medical treatment in hospitals.” They met on Saturday for weekly “life lessons,” during which he instilled those practices.
According to the police, the fast would only count if they gathered together. Mackenzie made the fasting venue his farm in Shakahola, where most dead bodies were found in shallow graves nearby. The cult followers were also instructed to stop contacting those around them and to destroy all identification documents if they wanted to go to heaven.
A victim of the Christian cult in Kenya after being rescued by the Kenyan Red Cross inside a car in the outskirts of Malindi on the Kenyan coast on Tuesday. Photo: AP News.
So far, 34 survivors have been found. The government has limited movement for the next 30 days and enacted a curfew at the ranch.
The Kenyan President William Ruto said he instructed law enforcement agencies to thoroughly investigate the situation only as a criminal case, without linking it to the religious aspects of it. Ruto is known to be the country’s first evangelical Christian president, openly praying in churches during his campaign. He has nominated several pastors into the parliament and as government officials.
On April 13, the Kenyan government authorized a rescue of two children who were reported to have starved and suffocated to death by their parents because of Mackenzie’s advice on March 16.
On March 23, Mackenzie was arraigned in court and released on an approximately $74 (10,000 Kenyan shillings) cash bail. The Malindi Courts gave the police 14 days to investigate the situation. Kenyan media reported that Mackenzie has been refusing food and water. Many local politicians are urging not to release him out of fear for the increase of cults in the country, which are common in the largely religious society.