The Tragedy of St Paul

The Tragedy of St Paul

The slide towards the thesis of the international cult

On Friday 27 August 2004, the police of St Paul, on Mauritius, made a macabre discovery: ten corpses in a house, including three adolescents…

By Emile d’Albret

On 1 September, L’express-Maurice headlines: “Tragedy of St.-Paul: the investigation turns towards the Eckankar cult”, and continues:

“The thesis according to which the cult, whose headquarters are located in Minnesota, is at the origin of the death of ten people on Friday, is being considered. A number of clues tend towards this lead.”

It would seem that the Madagascar, Réunion, Mauritius region is one where the theme of the cults is very often taken up. Indeed, nearly half of the French-language press articles speaking of the subject come from there.

One can compare the situation there to the great years of the French “anti-cult fight”, when the subject was in fashion, even if the context is appreciably different (there, the evangelical churches taking an active part in political life are the major preoccupation).

It is thus an opportune occasion for analysing the way the media and the investigators treat such an event under the inspiration of the French model.

I believe that the kind of statement found in the article’s title and introduction has been so thoroughly banalised that it must be restored to its context in order to grasp its gravity.

Eckankar is a legally declared non-profit religious organisation, established since 1965, which has been the object for some twenty years, and above all since the appearance of its name on the famous list of 172 of the parliamentary report, of the attention of the authorities of various countries as well as of people openly hostile to it.

The authorities have as yet found nothing to reproach them with, and even their detractors have against them only vague suspicions, propped up by confused testimonies, steeped in the bitterness of family dramas which are not the exclusive lot of people on a spiritual path.

I will not cite here the openly hostile and defamatory groups, which already have enough space in the Internet landscape, but I will nevertheless recommend a page taken up by several “anti-cult” sites (for want of worse, certainly): http://www.religion.qc.ca/Fiches/fiche016.htm, which is the descriptive sheet of the Quebec Centre de Consultation sur les Nouvelles Religions, whose content shows the distance that separates the reality of Eckankar from the vision the journalists of the Mauritian Express are trying to impose.

One finds, moreover, scattered across forums and sites, an abundance of positive testimonies about Eckankar, as well as their profession of faith, which is anything but apocalyptic or suicidal. See their site: http://www.eckankar.org/whatis.html

No concrete fact, at the present time, thus allows one to imagine that behind this name there is anything other than people like you and me, on a peaceful religious path.

These people find themselves today publicly associated with the dramatic death of 10 people, and suspected of being responsible for it.

Here now are the clues authorising the journalists and the investigators to launch such accusations:

Two medallions bearing the initials EK were found on the bodies of Crithika Mawooa and Rajesh Dhayam. These clues led the investigators to the hypothesis according to which the Eckankar cult is said to be behind the death of ten people at Béchard Lane, St.-Paul.

If they had worn crosses as pendants, would the suspicions have fallen on the Pope?

“The investigators are thus setting about seeking more details on the functioning and rituals of the Eckankar cult. They are also seeking to establish the identity of the principal leaders. A man suspected of having attended gatherings of this cult on several occasions is currently undergoing a tight interrogation.”

This last sentence makes of every participant in Eckankar’s activities (even an occasional one) a suspect liable to a “tight interrogation”.

At this stage, Eckankar, along with all its followers, is thus already condemned by the journalist to suspicion and distrust.

One can even say that the fact of Eckankar being a criminal organisation is posed as an established fact, a little as in the aftermath of the attack in Spain, when it is asserted that the E.T.A. or another terrorist group “did the deed”, without questioning whether they are capable of it.

If in the case of the E.T.A. history explains this attitude, in the case of St Paul the justification rests only on an extravagant montage which associates murder and suicide with the practices of spiritual minorities.

This montage was supplied “turnkey” by the anti-cult organisations some thirty years ago, the journalist has only to let herself be guided.

One thus finds here all the devices of the parliamentary report, the juxtaposition of the same dramatic and mediatised cases, WACO, the OTS, AUM, “Heaven’s Gate” and the Peoples Temple, with innocent spiritual movements, even though it has long been demonstrated that the political and mafia implications are so evident within the aforementioned affairs that no investigative journalist, sociologist or even judge of the law would today risk issuing the simplistic and erroneous conclusions the journalists of the Express dare to.

The rest of the article takes up the commonplaces of rumour and denunciation offered by the ADFI. These reflections of the relatives are the fruit of the seeds planted by the French parliamentary report, an orientation of minds towards the search for a belonging defined arbitrarily by criteria broad enough to be applied, as needed, in almost any circumstances.

“Meanwhile, numerous clues gathered by the investigators at the scene of the tragedy tend towards the cult thesis. Notably the discovery, at the Mawooa home in St.-Paul, of a letter from Maya Jhowry, one of the victims, addressed to Crithika Mawooa. Dated the month of June, the correspondence evokes Maya’s admiration for and total devotion to her ‘guru’.”

“Numerous testimonies gathered demonstrate moreover that Crithika constantly spoke of ‘spirituality and the philosophy of life’ with members of her family. ‘She frequently lost herself in interminable debates on the different religions but indulged in her own interpretations,’ asserts Vinod Mawooa, Crithika’s cousin. He adds that she expressed herself in an ‘unusual’ manner and that ‘the influence she was under could be seen just in the way she expressed herself’.”

There is the ferment of family suspicion, the one that makes of all those who speak of religion and spirituality, and above all of those who express themselves in an unusual manner, of those who “indulge in their own interpretations”, people in danger of suicidal, indeed criminal, drift.

“According to one hypothesis of the investigators, the ‘master of ceremonies’ is said to have made the other victims believe they had to swallow water to purify their bodies and souls in order to find peace and happiness again. But at the end of the ritual, death awaited them. For their glasses of water contained a certain dose of cyanide, sufficient to cause a quasi-instantaneous death. The master of ceremonies is then said to have taken his own life as he had programmed in advance.”

We learn there that the Mauritian judicial investigators count talented novelists in their ranks.

It is astonishing that they are less inspired by the themes offered by other clues in the investigation. For example:

IDENTIFICATION

Hervé Janvier, the 10th corpse

He had been missing since 20 November 2002. And Hervé Janvier, 49, was finally identified yesterday as the tenth corpse found on Friday in one of the two bedrooms located on the ground floor of a house at Béchard Lane, St-Paul.

The victim resided at the Flats Bhunjun, Quatre-Bornes. He was known in the brokers’ milieu around the Emmanuel Anquetil building in Port-Louis. His name was cited in the framework of the investigation of the Anti-Drug and Smuggling Unit (ADSU) in the Vinay Deelchand affair.

On the day of his disappearance, he is said to have been in possession of several documents and diskettes concerning the sale of land. Hervé Janvier was moreover wanted by the Central Criminal Investigation Department for an affair of a false identity card.”

In conclusion, one can say that the journalists do not burden themselves with the concern for coherence and plurality of opinion. They have, in fact, no contradictor. The consensus is such that it is accepted, and almost legal, to pin the blame on a spiritual minority without any proof.

It is interesting to see that the process feeds itself on the principle that calumny, even later refuted, always bears fruit.

Each suspicion is an occasion for reinforcing reflexes of fear in public opinion towards certain signs of non-conformity or certain words, which amplifies the psychosis and the denunciation and makes new supposed cases spring up.

There is here a human mechanism that tends to transfer the cause of our unease, of our worries, of our difficulty in living, onto a vague entity, fairly distant and rather marginal. From the “Jews” to the “gypsies”, from the “Arabs” to the “cults”, it is the same anger expressing itself, the same ignorance that one sees taken up and exploited by the media and by those who have a personal score to settle with the said entities or with what they convey.

It is quite obvious that we in no way anticipate the conclusions of the investigation and the real role Eckankar might have in the tragedy of Saint-Paul. We are defending here only the presumption of innocence.

Read the interview with the head of Eckankar in Mauritius

Read also the development of the investigation in our News section and, once again, the evident haste of the media and the investigators seizing on the spectre of the cults…