{"id":83619,"date":"2018-10-25T11:54:28","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T18:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=83619"},"modified":"2018-10-25T13:33:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T20:33:31","slug":"why-stand-is-covering-jonestown-today","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=83619","title":{"rendered":"Why STAND Is Covering Jonestown Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

(A Scientologist for 44 years and veteran investigative journalist and author, Tom Whittle has received numerous awards for reporting and editorial excellence. This article was originally published on the STAND (Scientologists Taking Action Against Discrimination)<\/a> website on October 10, 2018 and is reprinted with permission. If you have information relevant to this article, the author would like to hear from you. You can email him at STANDLeague.org<\/a> or send hard copy information to STAND, 1626 N. Wilcox Avenue #715, Los Angeles, CA 90028. Identities will be protected on request.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOn 18 November 1978, more than 900 Americans died in the small South American country of Guyana\u2026. The news media quickly tried to tell the story of the group despite an insurmountable obstacle: the people about whom they were writing were all dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

With those words in\u00a0Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple<\/em>,\u00a0Dr. Rebecca Moore, professor emeritus of religious studies<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0San Diego State University<\/a>, pointed to\u00a0a central problem yet to be resolved despite 40 years of media reports, anecdotal accounts, books and \u201cdocumentaries\u201d about Jonestown.<\/p>\n

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Kids playing at Jonestown in 1978 (photo credit – SDSU)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dr. Moore and her husband,\u00a0Fielding McGehee<\/a>, have been instrumental in keeping discussion alive in a continuing search for truth and closure on the subject.<\/p>\n

For four decades, a certain scenario has been presented to the public about what occurred. What if that scenario\u2014asserting that hundreds of people willingly and even eagerly lined up to drink poison\u2014was in error? What if the great majority of Jonestown residents did not die willingly but were in fact murdered? What if, as some evidence suggests, an outside force was involved?<\/p>\n

Thus far, articles published by\u00a0STAND<\/a>\u00a0have presented information from credible sources that demonstrate the \u201caccepted\u201d scenario to be incomplete at best and, in many aspects, utterly false. And since the series began, additional sources have shared vital information with STAND to further challenge the narrative of mass suicide.<\/p>\n

While numerous questions have been raised that cry out for answers, why would STAND be interested in a subject from 40 years ago, when most of today\u2019s Americans had not even been born?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor four decades, this tragedy has evoked mystery and fear in the minds of many on the subject of religions, casting an ominous shadow on the very subject,\u201d said Edward Parkin, International Director of STAND.<\/p>\n

Another November will soon be upon us. With it will come the same predictable narrative, repeated like beats of a mindless drum by media outlets almost too numerous to count: the residents of Jonestown committed communal suicide by drinking a toxic fruit-flavored concoction when their leader, Jim Jones, instructed them to do so.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Jonestown compound (photo credit – SDSU)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s what the public was told even before Guyana\u2019s chief medical examiner,\u00a0Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo<\/a>\u2014the only qualified medical authority to inspect the bodies on site before they began to decompose under harsh tropical conditions\u2014stated that the bodies he examined had been murdered.<\/p>\n

Did an entire community in fact \u201cdrink the Kool-Aid\u201d?<\/p>\n

Before one continues to accept that scenario, certain statements by independent witnesses that contradict it, as outlined in previous STAND postings, should be considered.<\/p>\n

How else can one explain the words of Dr. Mootoo, who reported that bodies he examined on the site had died from injections of cyanide in areas of the anatomy that would rule out suicide, such as between the shoulder blades?<\/p>\n

How else to explain the words of Tim Carter, who returned to Jonestown on November 20 to identify bodies of friends and family: \u201cI assert that the vast majority of those who died in Jonestown that day were murdered. \u2026 This is a historical fact that no documentary or film has yet chosen to discuss or even portray. In\u00a0every<\/em>\u00a0interview I\u2019ve ever given, I\u2019ve spoken about the bodies that I personally saw with abscesses. And yet, that fact is never reported.\u201d<\/p>\n

How else to explain the account of U.S. Army veteran Charles Huff, who claimed his team\u2014on site shortly after the tragedy\u2014found evidence that more than 30 Jonestown residents had been shot in the back with bullets or crossbow arrows while running away from Jonestown, toward the jungle? (Huff, moreover, provided confirmation of what Dr. Mootoo had reported: adults who had not been shot had been injected between the shoulder blades.)<\/p>\n

How else to explain the testimony of Stanley Clayton before a Guyanese coroner\u2019s jury that he had listened to an utterly silent Jonestown from the safety of the jungle for some 30 to 45 minutes when, suddenly, a chorus of cheers arose from \u201ca lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMurder is the ultimate violation of a person\u2019s\u00a0human rights<\/a>,\u201d said Edward Parkin. \u201cWhen evidence points to murder, complete investigation is not just warranted. It is mandated.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so, as November 18 approaches, why should people care about Jonestown?<\/p>\n

Would you care if a friend or relative was murdered and then, compounding the crime, media outlets subsequently demeaned him or her as a \u201csuicide\u201d?<\/p>\n

Multiply that number by the hundreds of men, women and children who perished at Jonestown, leaving behind countless grieving family members and friends\u2014and a myriad of unanswered questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(A Scientologist for 44 years and veteran investigative journalist and author, Tom Whittle has received numerous awards for reporting and editorial excellence. This article was originally published on the STAND (Scientologists Taking Action Against Discrimination) website on October 10, 2018 and is reprinted with permission. If you have information relevant to this article, the author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":81151,"menu_order":29,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-83619","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83619"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83630,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/83619\/revisions\/83630"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/81151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}