Uganda - Religion
The U.S. government estimates the total population at 34.8 million (July 2013 estimate). According to government data, 85 percent is Christian, 12 percent Muslim, and 3 percent Hindu, Jewish, or Bahai or adheres to indigenous beliefs. Among Christians, 42 percent are Roman Catholics, 36 percent Anglicans, 15 percent Pentecostal or Orthodox Christians, and 7 percent members of evangelical groups. The Muslim population is primarily Sunni. Indigenous religious groups practice in rural areas. Nationals of Indian origin or descent are the most significant non-African ethnic population and are primarily Shia Muslim or Hindu. There is a small indigenous Jewish community near the eastern town of Mbale.
The constitution and other laws and policies protect religious freedom. The government continued to impose restrictions on minority religious groups it defined as “cults.” The government arrested, before releasing without charge, 12 members of a “cult” religion. The government also imposed restrictions on religious groups on the grounds that individuals posed security risks. For example, the government closed 10 madrassahs on suspicion they were being used as recruitment centers for terrorist groups.
A number of millenarian religions (promising a "golden age," or millennium) exist in Uganda. They have often arisen in response to rapid culture change or other calamities and have sought to overthrow the political order that allowed the crisis to arise. Many millenarian religions, sometimes called cults, are led by a charismatic prophet who promises followers relief from sufferings. The strength of people's faith sometimes allows a prophet to make extraordinary demands on believers, and a successful prophet can win new converts when political upheaval is compounded by natural disaster, such as epidemics (possibly to include the spread of AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s).
The government imposed restrictions on minority religious groups it defined as “cults.” The government defined a “cult” as a system of religious worship, often with a charismatic leader, which indoctrinated members with “unorthodox or extremist” views, practices, or beliefs. Authorities investigated suspected “cult” groups that frustrated delivery of government services. For example, in November 2013 district officials in Lwengo started investigations into the activities of 666, a religious “cult” allegedly barring followers from using free treated mosquito nets or taking their children to government schools or hospitals.
On 28 April 2013, four pastors and six followers of His Voice Assembly, an evangelical church, were accused of burning nine shrines belonging to families that subscribe to traditional African religions in Luuka District. On April 29, Sanyu Moses, a member of an aggrieved family, filed a complaint with the police alleging the pastors maliciously damaged property and violated the families’ freedom of religion. The police arrested 10 members of the church, including the leader, Pastor Esther Lovisa. Following questioning of the suspects, the police determined the dispute was a family matter and advised the detainees to resolve the issue amicably, releasing them on the same day.
Roughly one in five Ugandans professed belief in local religions in the late 1980s. In Uganda as in other countries, religion serves social and political purposes, as well as individual needs. An important social function of religion is reinforcing group solidarity by providing elements necessary for society's survivalremembrances of the ancestors, means of settling disputes, and recognition of individual achievement. Another social function of religion is helping people cope with negative aspects of life-pain, suffering, and defeat-by providing an e-xplanation of their causes.
Religious beliefs and practices also serve political aims, especially by bolstering the authority of temporal rulers and at other times by allowing new leaders to mobilize political opposition and implement political change.
Among Bantu-speaking societies in southern Uganda, many local religions include beliefs in a creator God, usually known as Ntu or a variant of that term (e. g., Muntu). Most religions involve beliefs in ancestral and other spirits, and people offer prayers and sacrifices to symbolize respect for the dead and to maintain proper relationships among the living. An important example of this religious attitude is found in western Uganda among members of the Mbandwa religion and related belief systems throughout the region. Mbandwa mediators act on behalf of other believers, using trance or hypnosis and offering sacrifice and prayer to beseech the spirit world on behalf of the living. In Bunyoro, for example, the ancestral spirits, who protect those who pray to them, are believed to be the early mythical rulers, the Chwezi. As a result, the Mbandwa religion in these areas is sometimes called the Chwezi religion.
Factors which have perpetuated the human sacrifice/trafficking crime include the increasing number of people who believe in witchcraft, funny traditional rituals and making easy money. Such people can easily be led into human sacrifice by some mischievous traditional doctors or herbalists. Recent years witnessed the emergence of a group of fraudulent traditional doctors/herbalists who demand for human parts in exchange for imaginary big wealth or good luck. Lack of personal security, consciousness and laxity by some individuals and those entrusted with taking care of the children at home and other learning institutions which make it easy for the kidnaps and abductions to take place. Poverty which has led some people to practise or be used in negative adventures.
The issue of child trafficking in Uganda was forced to the limelight by the emergence of child sacrifice in recent years. The police in Uganda established through their investigations that several cases of children reported as missing ended up as cases of child sacrifice.5 In order to respond to this a task force was set up in the police by the Inspector General of Police in January 2009 known as the Anti-Human Sacrifice and Trafficking task force. The body parts of these children are used for purposes such as witchcraft, rituals and related practices.
The Inspector General of Police constituted an anti-human sacrifice/trafficking task force to monitor, coordinate, direct and boost police investigations, intelligence collection and public mobilisation/sensitisation against acts of human sacrifice and trafficking. The membership of the team includes police officers and other officers from the Internal Security Organisation, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and the Immigration Directorate.
On 17 March 2000 several hundred members of The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God were burnt to death at the sect's headquarters in Kanungu in southwest Uganda. The incident was initially treated as a mass suicide, however as further bodies of cult members were found buried in the gardens and beneath the floorboards of houses used by the sect it became clear that cult members had been massacred. On 28 July 2000 the police announced that most of the hundreds of people who died at Kanungu, whose bodies had been found in buried pits had been poisoned to death. Hundreds of bodies were discovered in various places in the country including Kampala where the cult had branches.
This group focused on upcoming Armageddon at the end of 2000 (not the end of 1999 as previously thought); it was a group based on Christianity, seemingly composed mainly of disenfranchised Roman Catholic clergy and lay people. On March 17, 2000, several hundred members died in a fire at the group's church; the ensuing investigation literally turned up hundreds of bodies. By 1 April 2000 a total of 389 bodies had been found; all bodies exhumed had been killed within a period of two months. This lends weight to the theory that sect leaders decided to kill their members after their prediction that the world would end in 2000 failed to materialise.
Credonia Mwerinde, a former prostitute who reportedly founded the sect in the late 1980's (some reports say it was not established until 1994), warned followers that the world was about to end, but said her followers would enter an ark and be saved. The sect had been predicting that the world would end on 31 December 1999. When the end did not come, sect leaders rescheduled the date for the end of June 2000. However Father Dominic Kataribabo, one of the 12 'apostles', talked of another date - 17 March 2000. On this date sect members entered their church in Kanungu. The doors were locked and the windows boarded and nailed shut from the outside. Villagers said there was a huge explosion at about 10.00am followed by the screams of people beating on the wooden windows.
In a telephone interview on 28 July 2000, Police Spokesman Asuman Mugenyi said that the death toll in the cult killings registered at 778. The number of deaths caused by this group, whether by coerced suicide or outright murder, surpassed the death toll of the Jonestown tragedy.
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