Revisiting Jim Jones And The Guyana Tragedy: "Mass Suicide or Mass Murder?"

[RBG Street Scholar]

Jonestown was the communal settlement in northwestern Guyana founded by the Peoples Temple of California, the following of Jim Jones. The group is widely regarded as having been a cult. Jonestown gained lasting international notoriety in 1978, when nearly its whole population died in a mass cult suicide orchestrated by Jones. "Jonestown" thus became a term for that incident, as well the name of settlement where it took place. The site is now an abandoned ruin.

Jonestown, named after Jones, was founded in 1974 on his initiative, and stood amidst jungle, about seven miles (11 km) southwesterly of the small town of Port Kaituma. Once it had been fully established and the bulk of Jones' followers had moved there, it had a population of approximately a thousand. Altogether, the settlement was only occupied for a few years, and most residents lived there under a year.

In November of 1978, United States congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown to investigate alleged abuses there. On November 18 while attempting to fly out, Ryan and four others were gunned down at an airstrip by members of the Peoples Temple. That evening, Jones led his followers in their mass murder-and-suicide. Over nine hundred men, women and children perished, Jones among them... continue reading after video

Jim Jones And The Jonestown Tragedy




The settlement was abandoned promptly thereafter by the collapsing remnant of the Peoples Temple. Afterward, it was at first tended by the Guyanese government, which allowed its re-occupation by Hmong refugees from Laos, for a few years in the early 1980s, but it has since been altogether deserted. It was looted but otherwise avoided by the local Guyanese, mostly destroyed by a fire in the mid-1980s, and its remains were left to decay and be reclaimed by the jungle....Read and Learn More

[BlackQueen]

I think it was mass murder,but then again...we really don't know why Jim Jones would kill his own disciples. Maybe it was out of fear of being prosecuted in the U.S. for holding them all prisoner,because none of them were allowed to escape,and those that did were shot to death. This mass murder/suicide left a lot of unanswered questions. But the real question...would you take your own life,or another life for a cause or religion?

[Napoleon]

Originally Posted by BlackQueen

I think it was mass murder,but then again...we really don't know why Jim Jones would kill his own disciples. Maybe it was out of fear of being prosecuted in the U.S. for holding them all prisoner,because none of them were allowed to escape,and those that did were shot to death. This mass murder/suicide left a lot of unanswered questions. But the real question...would you take your own life,or another life for a cause or religion?

I meet a man who did get away. He done work on my car. He did'nt say to much about his ordeal, but did say that he was tying to leave the group with his family, sadly only he excaped.