Jonestown massacre

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The Jonestown massacre or mass suicide of Jonestown is the partially forced suicide or murder of members of the People's Temple on November 18, 1978 in the Jonestown settlement founded by Jim Jones in northwestern Guyana . 909 people were killed.

prehistory

The leader of the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones, had retired to Jonestown with the members of the Peoples Temple. In Jonestown, around 1100 people lived hermetically sealed off from the outside world.

Visit by US Congressman Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr.

Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr.

Many of the members of the People's Temple did not know where their relatives were, as many of them had fled to Jonestown. It was rumored that the members of the Peoples Temple were locked up in the rainforest against their will. Concerned, relatives turned to US Congressman Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. , who wanted to get to the bottom of the matter personally and visit Jonestown. Ryan's visit was being prepared in Jonestown. Jim Jones was considering not letting Ryan in or murdering him in Jonestown. The residents were instructed not to speak to anyone on Ryan's team about anything except how great Jonestown was.

17th November 1978

Ryan, who was accompanied by employee Jackie Speier and a camera team, was warmly welcomed in Jonestown on the afternoon of November 17th. The team was impressed by the settlement with all its infrastructure, where rainforest had recently been. In the evening, Ryan and his team were welcomed with music and dancing. The team perceived the cultural life as very lively and happy. He praised the coexistence of people. During the ceremony, two members of the People's Temple slipped the camera crew “get us out of here” notes, causing Ryan and his team to become suspicious.

Ryan and three of his employees were allowed to spend the night in Jonestown, while the camera crew had to stay in the city of Port Kaituma, ten kilometers away . He was told there that people were being tortured in Jonestown.

November 18, 1978

Ryan and his team wanted to use the remaining time and ask some people why they were apparently not allowed to leave. Jones was also confronted with the allegations. Most people replied that they were happy in Jonestown and that there was no way they wanted to go, but that they could go anytime. Ryan's team tried to explore the Jonestown grounds further, but were denied access to certain areas.

The mood in Jonestown is changing

At 11.30 a.m. Edith Parks and another resident came to the team and announced that she wanted to leave Jonestown and that she was being held there. Jim Jones urged residents not to speak to reporters. The camera team then confronted Jones with the allegations of the two residents and also reported on the slips of paper. Jones denied the allegations, asserting that anyone is free to leave Jonestown at any time. The camera team then wanted to leave Jonestown and fly back to the USA with 16 residents who said they no longer wanted to live in Jonestown.

One of the residents advised Ryan to leave Jonestown immediately as he was in great danger. A short time later, Ryan was attacked with a knife, but not seriously injured. The team then left Jonestown with 16 residents. An armed agent commissioned by Jones was among the 16 people who wanted to leave the settlement.

Massacre on the airfield

At the Port Kaituma airfield, ten kilometers from Jonestown, Ryan and his team were about to board the plane when a tractor with a trailer pulled up to the plane. Close friends of Jim Jones got out and examined the situation. Shortly thereafter, the car parked right next to the plane and armed men opened fire from the convoy on the people standing around the plane. The Jones supporter who had gone among the residents ready to leave also shot. Five people were killed: Congressman Ryan, NBC reporter Don Harris, cinematographer Bob Brown, photographer Greg Robinson, and Jonestown resident Paddy Paws.

Recent events in Jonestown

When Jones received the news of Ryan's death, loudspeakers called the residents in the Jonestown Community Pavilion. While the pavilion was being surrounded by armed guards, Jim Jones stated that Ryan was dead and that soldiers would soon be coming to look for him. He said: “If we are not allowed to live in peace, we want to die in peace anyway. Death is just the transition to another level. ”A mixture of juice, valium and potassium cyanide in paper cups was given to everyone. First, the babies and children were given the poisonous drink or injected. Then it was the turn of the youngsters and adults. Many parents drank the poison after watching their children die. The procedure went quickly; Suicide exercises had previously been carried out regularly. The original tape recordings indicate that many residents only poisoned themselves and their children by force. Several residents who tried to flee were also shot dead by the armed guards. This is also confirmed by the descriptions of those residents who managed to escape.

It can be assumed that some of the residents drank the poison voluntarily and thus died by suicide. However, it can be questioned to what extent a call for mass suicide under threat of armed violence can even be considered voluntary. Jim Jones died from a headshot; whether he killed himself is unknown.

Around 80 Jonestown residents, including Stephan Jones, Jim Jones' son, were absent that day and therefore survived. Five people managed to escape into the jungle.

November 19, 1978

At 2:00 a.m., two of Jonestown residents who survived the airfield massacre reported to authorities that Jim Jones was likely to get residents to kill themselves. Guyanese soldiers reached Jonestown at dawn . They initially found an estimated 400 bodies. It was only when US soldiers arrived to rescue the dead that it was recognized that there were other corpses among the dead. The number of all deaths counted on November 19 is given as 913, 908 or 909. As a result, a large number of the 1110 members, including 276 children, perished.

media

  • In his documentary film Jonestown - Todeswahn einer Sekt (Original title: Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple ) from 2006, filmmaker Stanley Nelson describes the story of Jim Jones. The film documents the totalitarian sect state with original images and sound material as well as interviews with contemporary witnesses.
  • The 100-minute Canadian-French documentary Jonestown - Massacre in the Jungle (original title: Jonestown - Paradise Lost ) from 2007 illuminates the history of the events in the sealed-off settlement in South American Guyana. The screenplay was written by Jason Sherman and directed by Tim Wolochatiuk .
  • The four-part American documentary Jonestown - mass suicide of a sect (original title: Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle ) from 2018 deals with the history of the People's Temple including the events in Jonestown.
  • The American documentary series The Final Report is dedicated to the events in Jonestown in the episode The Jonestown Tragedy (German: Jonestown - Sektentod im Regenwald ). In addition, the second episode of the sixth season of the US documentary series deals with the massacre seconds before the accident .
  • Both the 1979 Mexican-Spanish-Panamanian coproduction Guiana - Cult of the Damned and the 1980 US film The Guyana Massacre are about the mass suicide in Jonestown. Furthermore, the American film The Sacrament from 2013 is loosely based on the events of the Jonestown massacre.
  • In an episode of the American series American Horror Story: Cult , the events are also treated and partially re-enacted.
  • The tracks Guyana (Cult of the Damned) by the metal band Manowar , Koolaid by the band Accept and Carnage in the Temple of the Damned by the death metal band Deicide are about the events in Jonestown. The song Jonestown (Interlude) by rapper Post Malone is also about the Jonestown massacre.
  • The American band The Brian Jonestown Massacre refers to those events with part of their name.
  • The plot of the video game Outlast 2 is largely based on the Jonestown massacre.
  • In the TKKG book Die Bettelmönche aus Atlantis , published for the first time in 1981, the Jonestown massacre is mentioned (as an event that “was not long ago”), since the book is about the eponymous sect.

additional

In the English-speaking world, the expression “drinking the Kool-Aid ”, alluding to the mass suicide of Jonestown, is mostly used as a metaphor that can be translated as “blindly trusting an ideology (under peer pressure )”.

literature

  • Nick Yapp: True Crime - The Most Spectacular Crimes in History. Parragon, Bath et al. a. 2007, ISBN 978-1-4054-9795-4 .

Web links

Commons : Jonestown  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Jonestown - Sect Death in the Rainforest
  2. ↑ Jonestown - A Sect's Death Mania
  3. ↑ Moshe Hazani: Sacrificial immortality: Towards a theory of suicidal terrorism and related phenomena. In: Psychoanalytic Study of Society. 19, 1993, pp. 441f.
  4. ↑ The Final Report: The Jonestown Tragedy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  5. ↑ The Sacrament in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  6. ↑ The Jonestown Massacre - The Real Story Behind Outlast 2 . gamepro.de , April 30, 2017, accessed on May 2, 2017.
  7. ↑ Chris Higgins: Stop Saying 'Drink the Kool-Aid'. theatlantic.com , November 8, 2012, accessed July 22, 2013 .
  8. ^ 'Jonestown': Portrait of a Disturbed Cult Leader. npr.org , October 20, 2006, accessed September 4, 2014 .
  9. ^ Drink the Kool-Aid. wordspy.com, October 27, 1998, accessed January 29, 2008 .