Families urged to save Doomsday Cultists
Authorities in central Russia have turned to relatives of the Doomsday cult, in a bid to end a three week suicide pact. About 30 religious fanatics, including several children, are holed up in an underground bunker in the Penza Region.
Authorities are expecting family members to flock to the cave in the coming days.
Lubov Platonova’s sister Tatiana is one of the cult members, and she still can’t understand why she took such an action.
In the last letter Tatiana sent to her ‘beloved sister’ she wrote:
“The end of the world is coming. When Doomsday comes, there will only be darkness. Take good care of yourself. Don’t buy any spiritual literature, especially Bibles, because all modern books are micro-chipped.”
Elena Sidelnikova’s 80-year-old aunt Olga is also hiding in the underground bunker and is believed to be the group leader.
In a letter Olga sent to her relatives she says she had refused the state pension and a new passport.
“We want to live in isolation like monks and hermits. We are abdicating from the world,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, as the days go on, security has been visibly tightened. The roads leading to the bunker concealed in a snow-covered hillside now blocked with piles of sand.
It seems authorities want journalists out as any attempt to remove the members of the so called ‘True Orthodox Church’ may now be kept low profile.
The cult members appear to share the same obsession. They claim the personal ID numbers in the new micro-chipped passports conceal satanic meanings, a sign that Doomsday is on its way.
Rise of cults in post-Soviet Russia
Russia has seen a rise in the number of religious cults since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The most well-known is in Siberia, where some 5,000 people worship a former traffic policeman who claims he is Jesus.
In Kazan, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Tatarstan, members of a Muslim sect are also awaiting Doomsday.
They live in an isolated community, but they believe they have to powers of persuasion to coax Penza’s Orthodox Christians out from underground.
“Doomsday may come in the next minute, but it may take a billion years. If they come to join us we’ll enlighten them. They need to come out of the darkness so we can all outlive doomsday together,” Fanis Islamov, Muslim community member says.
