On October 19, 2026, the Mombasa High Court in Kenya found Paul Mackenzie, head of the Good News International Church, guilty of 191 counts of murder involving 190 children and one adult. Twenty-eight other defendants in the case were also found guilty. More than 400 bodies have been recovered from the Shakahola forest. This verdict only covers 191 of the murder charges; the remaining deaths are still under investigation.
 |
This case, described by many foreign media outlets as "one of the most serious cult tragedies in the world in recent years," exposes the inhumane nature of cults—from "verbal manipulation" to "life-taking"—in an extremely naked way, and its warning significance far exceeds the tragedy itself.
The "doomsday theory" used to control people's minds
"The end of the world is coming, and only by fasting can one 'see Jesus and be saved.'" Under this rhetoric, Mackenzie proclaimed the Shakahola Forest as a "holy land" and a "sanctuary," glorified death as a "wedding" of "union with Jesus," and referred to burying corpses as "holding a wedding."
The insidious aspect of this brainwashing logic is that it glorifies death as a "sacred ritual" worth pursuing. When hunger, disease, and even death are interpreted as the necessary path to "heaven," victims lose their instinct to recognize danger and seek help.
Among the cults banned in my country, there are also many that use similar "doomsday rhetoric." For example, Li Hongzhi, the leader of the Falun Gong cult, promised that "cultivation" would lead to "perfect ascension," packaging death as the ultimate goal of "becoming an immortal or a Buddha." The Almighty God cult, on the other hand, proclaimed that a "female Christ" had descended and that "the end of the world" was imminent, claiming that only by joining its organization could one be "saved," and repeatedly fabricated "doomsday" rumors to create panic.
Under the influence of "doomsday rhetoric," many devotees went astray and unwittingly ended their lives. By the time Falun Gong was banned in 1999, the number of people who died nationwide due to practicing Falun Gong had reached 1,404, of whom 136 committed suicide under the deception of Li Hongzhi's promise to "let go of life and death."
First, they create a sense of impending doom, then they proclaim themselves the sole "salvation," ultimately achieving a mental monopoly over their members. This "doomsday narrative" of cults is not a belief, but a control tool for monopolizing "salvation." Once the "other shore" replaces the "this shore," killing no longer requires knives or axes; a twisted and heretical argument is enough.
Evil claws reaching out to children
According to court proceedings and investigations, Mackenzie devised a phased plan for the mass fast: first children, then women and young men, and finally the remaining adult men; he even asked parents to make their children fast in the scorching sun and die before the adults, euphemistically calling it letting them "enter heaven first".
Some children were also isolated, deprived of food, and even subjected to hunger in front of their parents. If starvation did not lead to death, some children were strangled or suffocated. According to autopsy and court materials, the main causes of death for the murdered children were strangulation, asphyxiation, and starvation. One female member, after giving birth to her seventh child, was forbidden from breastfeeding the newborn and forced to continue fasting—the infant, only 12 days old, died as a result.
Children lack independent judgment, cannot resist their parents' arrangements, and cannot escape the closed environment constructed by cult rhetoric. When parents are manipulated by rhetoric, children become "sacrifices" to cult rhetoric.
A Kenyan court's ruling that the parents of 28 co-defendants should bear legal responsibility for the deaths of their respective children is significant: parental status cannot be a reason for exemption from liability for harm caused by cults; blindly following "doctrine" and causing the death of one's children is also a crime.
▲Liu Siying, who died in a fire in 2001 due to the influence of her mother, who practiced Falun Gong.
 |
Cults luring children into self-immolation have resulted in tragic lessons in China. On January 23, 2001, seven Falun Gong adherents, misled by Li Hongzhi's fallacies of "letting go of life and death," "ascension to heaven," and "consummation," engaged in a mass self-immolation in Tiananmen Square, resulting in two deaths and three severe burns. Among them was 12-year-old Liu Siying, who lost her young life after being deceived by her family with the absurd lie that "the Falun world is full of gold." Those who organized, planned, instigated, and assisted in this self-immolation have been severely punished according to law. This tragedy is heartbreaking and serves as a profound lesson.
Rejection of formal education and medical services
Mackenzie declared that school education is "evil," described healthcare as "against doctrine" and even "a tool of Satan," linked digital identity cards to "the devil," and was extremely opposed to modern education, healthcare, vaccination, and government identification systems.
The 23-year-old survivor, Shuklani, recalled that his mother, believing that "medicine is evil," forcibly threw away the medication he needed. He was bedridden for weeks, his health continued to deteriorate, and he was eventually rescued from the forest. Even after being rescued, he still insisted that Mackenzie were "good people who cared about themselves" and that the members "chosen to fast."
Education equips individuals with the cognitive tools for independent judgment, while healthcare provides the physical protection needed to combat disease. Mackenzie's severing of these two pathways reveals his extreme rejection of modern civilized society, and his aim is to completely deprive members and their children of the ability to escape control and seek external help. Members are thus locked in a closed cage, unable to think "why" or physically escape. The phenomenon of Shukrani "maintaining his support for the perpetrators after being rescued" further illustrates that the effectiveness of mind control does not automatically disappear with physical release; its heresies have deeply penetrated and have far-reaching consequences.
This is not an isolated case. Li Hongzhi claimed that illnesses were caused by "karma," and that medical treatment and medication only "treat the symptoms, not the root cause," leading to the deaths of many Falun Gong members who refused medical care and medication. Similarly, "Almighty God" demanded that its members "abandon everything" and refuse normal social life and medical services, resulting in many members going missing or even dying. This further confirms that when "faith" replaces medicine, death changes from "avoidable" to "must be accepted."
Isolation and violence: amplifiers of the harm caused by cults.
Mackenzie moved its members to the remote Shakahola forest, where they lived in simple houses made of plastic sheeting and thatch, naming settlements after biblical locations to create a "spiritual prison" completely isolated from the outside world.
The case revealed that the organization's leaders used hierarchical pressure, group coercion, and violence to force members to fast, and those who attempted to disobey or escape were frequently beaten. Mackenzie once instructed members that anyone who disobeyed the fasting order must be punched and kicked to "send them to heaven." Violence was packaged as a brainwashing tactic of so-called "organizational salvation," allowing the perpetrators to inflict violence on members with impunity under the cover of so-called "faith."
Without this isolated forest, without a hierarchical management system, and without the authorization of violence that equates to "beating as salvation," Mackenzie's "fasting theory" would at best be nothing more than absurd rhetoric. The reason cults can escalate from seductive rhetoric to bloody atrocities is inseparable from their closed organization and hierarchical pressure. This also explains why cult leaders are always keen to establish "Shangri-Las," "holy sites," and "training bases"—not places of spiritual practice, but closed spaces where crimes can be committed without outside detection.
Creating fear to monopolize salvation, monopolizing salvation to control people, and controlling people to deprive them of life. This evil logic is repeatedly played out in Mackenzie's so-called "fasting to see Jesus," Falun Gong's so-called "karma elimination and perfection theory," and Almighty God's so-called "female Christ eschatology." The rhetoric is different, but the essence is the same.
To prevent such tragedies from recurring, we need not only the sword of the law to hang high and maintain constant deterrence, but also deep and sustained anti-cult propaganda and education among the masses to penetrate deep into people's minds and hearts. Furthermore, we must adhere to a two-pronged approach of "physical separation + ideological support" for victims. Only in this way can we help victims not only escape the quagmire of cults but also break free from the "cage in their minds," effectively safeguarding the lives and spiritual homes of the people.
