The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 26

"More-sinister than Jim Jones? Guyana cult leader worshiped as God 5 By PIETER VAN BENNEKOM GEORGETOWN, Guyana (UPI) I A year after the demise of the People's Temple sect, a new cult is making waves in Guyana under the leadership of an American fugitive who came out of jail in the South after an early civil rights protest to proclaim himself a black J-god. I Like most former British colonies around the Caribbean basin, Guyana has a proliferation of sects and churches, so the appearance of a new one wouldn't be unusual. But the House of Israel, as this cult is called, has sinister aspects. David Hill, who changed his name to Edward Washington and then to "rabbi" Omari Oba or God, has placed his fanatical followers at the service of the socialist Guyana government of Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. As a strong- armed goon squad, its members break strikes, beat up political opponents and intimidate the populace.

One person, a priest-photographer for a Catholic weekly, was killed during a clash between House of Israel fanatics and anti-government demonstrators. "Rabbi" Washington doesn't shun comparisons with Jim Jones of the People's Temple despite the macabre end of that sect. He boasts he has even more personal control over his followers than Jones had over his. "The great difference between me and the late Jim Jones is that he had all Americans with one Guyanese, but we have all Guyanese with one American I'm the only one," Washington said in an interview. 'To them I am God' "To them I am God.

I gave my first sermon to three people and I told them, 'If I'm not God, forget "If I say it's going to snow tonight, they're all going out to buy boots." During a church service, he told about 50 of his assembled followers, "If I tell you I'm President Jimmy Carter, I'm not lying, am The crowd thundered approval with stomping feet and clapping hands. At that service, Washington read from the Bible: "God told Moses or if you will permit me to explain it to you better, I told Moses." His Guyanese wife, a huge woman he calls Queen Lulu, pointed toward her husband as she sang a song, "I Have Seen God." Washington's "doctrine" is that blacks are Jews, that Jesus Christ. Moses and all the prophets were black, and that the people living in Israel and elsewhere are not Jews but descend- ants of Esau, Jacob's brother, "who sold his birthright for a morsel of meat." Washington cites the miracle performed on Moses' hand, turning it "white as snow," as evidence that the prophet must have been black. He also calls Egyptians black and says if Pharaoh's daughter was able to pass Moses off as her son, he must have been black. Washington prophesied he will be assassinated soon by another black man but will rise from the dead in days "and that's when the battle of Armageddon will begin and I and my chosen people will be indestructible." The former David Hill admits he's trying to delay his death as long as possible.

He travels around Guyana in a steel-gray Cadillac, an ostentatious vehicle for Guyana, with a driver and two armed guards at all times. Racist and proud of it He says his theology is racist "and I make no apology for that," but he adds some members of Guyana's large East Indian community, plus a few whites and two Chinese, are among his flock. The 51-year-old Washington pudgy, short, balding, with several teeth missing mixes black power preach- ings, old-fashioned Southern revivalism and some of the same mind control techniques Jim Jones used to maintain an absolute hold over his Peoples Temple. He says his father died before he was born and his mother died giving birth to him in 1928 he doesn't know where "cause niggers not getting birth certificates in those days." He says he was raised by Ben Marshall, a black preacher in Nashville, and married Marshall's daughter Ruthie after coming back home from the Navy in World War II, then became a preacher himself in Marshall's Church of Christ. He says he was among people trying to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, in 1953 and drove a school bus through the door of the school cafeteria to gain access for black children.

"A couple of hours later i was in jail with a busted head and swollen lips and I was sentenced to one year in prison for what they called destruction of property. "When I came out of prison, I was born again, but not like Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham. I realized that all the teaching of the churches was phony nonsense, that the whole meaning of white theology is to keep a whole race oppressed. "Jesus Christ and all the apostles and everyone but the devil was white "GOD" SPEAKS Edward Washington, also known as Rabbi Omari Oba or God, addresses the faithful at the House of Israel in Georgetown, and he was black, of course. The church is the black man's worst enemy with its songs about a white Christmas "And the main black leaders were whiter than the white man.

The only difference between Martin Luther King and George Wallace was the color of their skin. The civil rights movement didn't change a thing The civil rights movement got jobs for niggers that were hired Monday and fired Friday." Washington says he founded the first House of Israel in Chicago in 1956. He later moved to Cleveland, where in 1961 he organized the picketing of nine hamburger stands in the ghettoes to force the hamburger chain to sell franchises to blacks. "Not even a window was broken," Washington said. "But I was indicted on nine counts of blackmail for each one of those outlets, convicted and sentenced to five years on each count, running consecutively that's 45 years." Jumped bond He says he jumped a $50,000 appeal bond, changed his name from David Hill to Edward Washington, got a passport in New York and headed for Algeria.

From there, he said, he visited other parts of Africa and explored the possibility of starting a House of Israel in Haiti and Cuba before ending up in Guyana in 1972. Senate votes big windfall tax break to independent oilmen WASHINGTON (UPI) In a move the White House calls "a raw deal for the American people," the Senate has given independent American oil producers a $10 billion tax break that virtually exempts them from the proposed windfall profits tax. The Senate voted 53-41 to approve an amendment by Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D- Texas, that would cut $10 billion from the $138 billion Senate Finance Committee windfall bill by exempting the first 1,000 barrels of oil produced daily by independent operators. Sen.

Daniel Moynihan, said the amendment had the effect of excluding independent producers in Oklahoma and Louisiana from the windfall tax. He said some of the independent companies earn $200 million a year. "That's no mom and pop operation," Moynihan said. But Bentsen retorted: "That's small potatoes in their league." The tax break is in addition to the $16 billion exemption for stripper oil wells which produce less than 10 barrels a day, and most of which are operated by independent producers which already is in the committee bill. The vote was a sharp setback for those senators trying to toughen the committee bill, which already is half as tough as the $277 billion windfall bill passed by the House last June.

But those favoring a stiffer windfall tax vowed to continue their efforts. White House press secretary Jody Powell said the vote was "a raw deal for the American people." He said Congress still should pass a strong windfall profits tax "if they are indeed concerned about the United States being subject to blackmail" by oil rich foreign countries. Cash for trains In other action Tuesday, the Senate agreed to earmark $1 billion of the windfall profits revenues for revitalization of passenger and freight trains. It also scrapped the special trust funds through which the Senate committee planned to spend $15 billion for development of urban mass transit systems and aid to the poor and elderly to help them pay their winter fuel bills in fiscal years 1981 and 1982. Security tightest in history for pope's visit to Turkey ANKARA, Turkey (UPI) Declaring "love is stronger than danger," Pope John Paul arrived in Moslem Turkey Wednesday under the most massive security operation the country has ever seen.

Police in the capital took more than 600 students into custody for attempting to stage demonstrations against the pontiff. They said about 500 students were surrounded by police when they started demonstrating in downtown Ankara at the time the pontiff landed at Esenbog Airport, 20 miles away, to begin his three-day visit. Police took more than 300 members of the group into custody. The others fled but, police said, regrouped later and tried to demonstrate when the pope went to visit the mausoleum of Kemal Ataturk, father of the Turkish Republic, who instituted the separation of mosque and state. Police said another 300 students were taken into custody at that point and had to be taken to military headquarters of the martial law command because there was no room for them in the regular jail.

Security authorities had said they were expecting trouble during the pontiff's visit. An unofficial source in Istanbul, where a leading newspaper Monday received a death threat letter against the pope purportedly sent by an escaped accused assassin, called the entire nationwide operation "the most massive Turkey has ever seen." Before boarding the green and white papal Boeing 747 jet in Rome, the pope said his trip "represents a voyage of great hope" in healing the 925-year-old rift between Roman Catholicism and the separated Orthodox churches. After greeting Turkish President Fahri Koroturk upon arrival, the pontiff ducked down to kiss the tarmac as he had done in his visits to Mexico, Ireland, the United States and Poland. On the papal aircraft John Paul told reporters why he was traveling to a Moslem country at this time of turbulence. "We must go now for ecumenical reasons," he said.

"Besides, love is stronger than danger." Though the 59-year-old pope planned extensive talks with President Fahri Koroturk and other Turkish political leaders in the capital, the highlight of his visit was the scheduled meeting with Greek Patriarch Dimitrios "first among equals" of the 14 Eastern Orthodox churches. UPI Photo Guyana. Washington claims he has more control over his followers than did the late Rev. Jim Jones. "In Cuba there is a better way of life, so there was no need for a House of Israel.

They don't run no ads in no papers about coming to church on Sunday. There is no Christmas, like in the United States, where they get the nig- gers to buy a whole bunch of stuff that the trucks come back to get in June because the blacks can't pay for it." Soon after arriving in Guyana, Washington was befriended by the American-born wife of Guyanan opposition leader Cheddi Jagan, the former Janet Rosenberg of Chicago, 111. Mrs. Rosenberg, also a Marxist, says she paid Washington's hotel bill for a week after he told her of being a black persecuted by the racist, imperialist U.S. system of justice.

A member of Jagan's party said recently he was glad to be speaking on the floor of parliament because if he criticized the Burnham government on the street outside, the rabbi's people would bust his head. Some critics estimate that Washington's followers number only a few hun- dred, but he claims 8,600 members spread over 38 branches in Guyana, as well as others in Surinam, Jamaica, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and New York. The figure may be higher than that because the faithful reportedly have infiltrated the Guyanese army, police and civil service under cover. Cozy with regime Although Washington says he has never met Burnham or spoken to him on the telephone, there is no doubt about his extremely close working relationship with the Burnham government and the ruling People's National Congress Party. Washington gets 30 minutes free radio time every Sunday on the Burnham government's Guyana Broadcasting Service.

He makes no apology for his cult's involvement in local politics "They're Guyanese, so why shouldn't they take part in politics?" When the sugar workers, most of whom belong to Jagan's opposition party, went out on strike, Washington sent 300 of his members to cut cane for seven days a week without pay to help break the strike. He did the same with a government-owned department store. He doesn't deny that his people go to anti-government demonstrations to intimidate the opposition, but he has never even been questioned by police about beatings that repeatedly occurred at such clashes. An alleged House of Israel member, Bilal Ato, is in jail for the stabbing murder of Catholic priest-photographer Rev. Bernard Darke last May at an anti-government demonstration.

But Washington says, "I don't have any member by the name Ato." In July 1978, Washington sent his members to vote in Burnham's controversial referendum delaying new elections indefinitely and keeping the prime minister in power while a new Socialist constitution is being written for Guyana. About 90 percent of Guyana's voters boycotted that vote. Washington says he hasn't received "10 cents" from the Burnham government for his services to the regime and adds the government is only showing its gratitude by letting him stay, in the country on an expired U.S. passport. His lawyer, Stanley Moore, also was a lawyer for the Temple The United States has no extradition treaty with Guyana and Washington said he hopes to get Guyanese citizenship.

"I'll never go back (to the United States), I'm in heaven here," he said during the interview at his spacious, two-story house in a new Georgetown suburb across the street from a bank president. Washington's followers, whom he calls the most disciplined group in the Caribbean, practice communal living, and turn all their earnings and possessions over to him. In green, red and black uniforms, they sell plantain chips, ketchup and clothes on the streets. Their neither smoke nor drink and do not eat pork. For their "pure socialism" sect, they have been known to recruit new members from among just-released convicts at the prison gate.

Their homes in Georgetown have drawn the attention of the city's fire and health departments because of alleged unsanitary conditions and fire hazards. Neighbors complain that the daily revivalist-style services at the cult's headquarters with feet-stomping, music, loud singing and shouting often go on until 2 a.m. Lack of sleep is a mind-control technique also used by Jones and other cults like the Moonies and the Hari Krishnas. House of Israel members may not marry outside the sect and discipline is kept by a six-man central committee headed by Washington himself. His chief deputy is a former University of Guyana student who dropped out of a civil engineering career.

Mum on assets Washington won't say how much ma; terial wealth his group has accumulated. "Anyone who knows won't say and anyone who says doesn't know," he says with a smile. But he says the sect's finances are so substantial that "we may have to loan the government of Guyana some money if they get into trouble with the IMF." Burnham's administration is continually in the red and operates on standby credits from the Washington-based International Monetary Fund. Of the two lowest tar brands: tests prove Now is more satisfying. Now and Carlton are the two lowest tar brands you can smoke.

The big difference between them is satisfaction. Tests among smokers proved Now is more satisfying than Carlton. Smoother and better tasting. So if you want a cigarette at the very lowest levels of tar. get the one that's more satisfying Get Now Available in regular, menthol; soft pack and crush proof box.

NOW. 2 mg tar. Winning satisfaction Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health. FILTER SOFT.PACK, 1 mg. NOW FILTER, MENTHOL: 2 mg.

.2 mg. nicotine av. per cigarette by FTC method. i.