Guinness Records: Massacre or Suicide?

From Death Row, This Is Mumia Abu-Jamal

For millions of people worldwide, the Guinness Book of World Records is the definitive source for matters great and small.

Many a conflict has been resolved by reference to it, for it is seen as the last word. One thinks there are more copies of its books in bars and taverns than in libraries.

But in at least one case, the venerable record keeping agency has been called into serious question. That case is the May 13th, 1985 MOVE Bombing, where 11 men, women and babies were killed by Philadelphia police.

The problem arises when the Guinness agency notes and records the events as a case of mass suicide—not mass murder. MOVE’s Ramona Africa, who narrowly escaped being burned to death during the bombing, heard about the reference, looked it up on the Web, and—voila!—there it was; in the 2008 online edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, in a section on cult suicides, MOVE (actually “The MOVE”) is listed as one case among six.

When she contacted the Guinness editors, she received an answer citing a London based group called the Cult Information Centre (CIC) as the basis for its listing.

As the MOVE Organization itself has noted in an online public message: We are not a cult, we’re an organization, and we certainly did not commit suicide on May 13th, 1985. The U.S. government dropped an incendiary bomb made of C4 on our home. The bomb ignited a fire and the fire department refused to do anything to put out the fire. They made a conscious decision to let the fire burn. Our home was a blazing inferno. 11 MOVE men, women, babies and numerous animals were burned alive because of that fire and because cops deliberately shot at us as we tried to escape that blazing inferno. It’s documented that fragments from police bullets were found in some of the bodies of murdered MOVE people. That is not suicide; it’s deliberate murder.

In the October 19, 2007 reply letter from Guinness World Records’ editor-in-chief, Craig Glenday, the London based company cites CIC as a “credible source” for its report, and includes a section of the CIC description from their web site. They insist their data is both “accurate” and “correct.”

Question: Why is the CIC account more “credible” than that of Ramona—who was in the house and almost burned to death? It is a measure of the arrogance of those in positions of power that no one ever tried to contact MOVE before adding it to a suicide list—nor the one adult who survived this mass murder.

MOVE is circulating an online petition at: http://ipetitions.com/petition/OnaMove or let’s just keep it simple, try: www.onamove.com. It’s directed at Guinness and the CIC to retract this notation. Sounds like a plan.

From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

16 November 2007

©2007 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Send urgently needed contributions for Mumia’s legal defense, made payable to “National Lawyers Guild Foundation” and earmarked for “Mumia,” to: Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, P.O. Box 2012, New York, NY 10159.

If you wish to correspond with Mumia, you can write to: Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM8335, SCI Greene, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370.