Every Monday on Global Comment, we share Something Special you don’t want to miss. To fit with the six core pillars of the magazine, these will alternate between the themes of watch / listen / read / see / taste / place.
It will be something different every week, but it will always be about something worth seeing, hearing or watching, or a place worth visiting or a food worth tasting.
This week, take the time to read this well-written and carefully researched story about members of a Kenyan cult who starved to death, by Carey Baraka for the Pulitzer Center.
The same day that the bodies were found, a short, stocky man called Paul Nthenge Mackenzie was arrested at his home in Malindi, a seaside resort town roughly 70km from Shakahola. Mackenzie, who was 47 years old at the time, was best known as the charismatic leader of a fringe church called Good News International (GNI). Now he is in jail, awaiting trial on charges of murder, manslaughter and torture for having preached to his followers that fasting to death would lead to their spiritual salvation (he denies all allegations). So far, the bodies of 429 people — including nearly 200 children — have been recovered from the forest. Roughly 600 other members of GNI are missing and may have died, too.
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