The house in which more than 150 bodies were discovered buried in a mass grave by followers of the self-styled cult leader, Joseph Kibwetere, 11 years ago, is under renovation to be turned into a commercial guest house.
Residents of Rubirizi town council, Rubirizi district, where the house is located, have shunned it for all these years, fearing that ghosts would haunt them if they occupied it. Kakuru Byamugisha, the area Local Council II chairperson, told The Observer that no one has occupied the house since the police retrieved the decomposing bodies from it.
Kibwetere, who was the leader of the shadowy ‘Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments’, duped hundreds of Ugandans into surrendering their possessions to his cult, and entering into a makeshift church in Kanungu in western Uganda, before they were locked inside and the church set ablaze. More than 500 cult members, including children, perished.
In the days that followed, police and local authorities exhumed hundreds of bodies of people that had been murdered by the cult and buried in different places.
According to pathologists who examined their remains, some had been poisoned, others strangled. Many had stab wounds and/or fractured skulls. The bodies were mostly buried in mass graves under the houses where they were discovered, the majority in present-day Rubirizi district.
Residents who talked to The Observer expressed fear that renovation of the house, in which many of their murdered relatives were found buried, could affect them psychologically.
Rosemary Kirabo, a resident of Rugazi town council who lost four relatives, says the government should have demolished the building.
“Government should have come in and demolished this house because whenever we look at it, it brings fresh sad memories of our people, she said.
Sunday, 06 November 2011 22:55
Written by Wilson Asiimwe
http://webmail.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15790:kibweteres-mass-grave-site-becomes-guest-house&catid=34:news&Itemid=59
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