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Japan
Japan
The "absolute truth" of Asahara earned him the death he expected for others. pair of six other members of the "Absolute Truth" sect. In 1995, five worshipers poured liquid sarin into the Tokyo subway: they killed 13 people and wounded over 5,000. Japan changed forever but the man who was Buddha and Christ was still followers
] Ana France
M to bind people to relieve the suffering of wandering in this godless world: such was the argument of worship Aum Shinrikyo, or "Supreme Truth, "a Japanese sect whose members met this week had given to others – death. After exhausting all available resources, seven worshipers were hanged at dawn on Friday in a Japanese prison, without this having been announced before. Six others are waiting for the same fate.
The worship of Aum was a hybrid monster – and there are still some leftovers. A lot of juvenile revolt and frustration, catastrophic theories of impending destruction, the certainty of a third great war, Buddhist meditation rituals, yoga and black magic. It began in the 1980s with this more "spiritual" part until it became a terrestrial version of the book of Revelation. Shoko Asahara, whose real name is – was – Chizuo Matsumoto, declared himself to be the Christ but also declared himself "the first awake" after Buddha. He was 63, was convicted of 13 crimes that resulted in the death of 29 people and was executed after exhausting all resources since, in 2004, the Japanese justice sentenced him to death.
Born virtually blind in 1955 on the island of Kyushu, Asahara was considered a charismatic leader since in 1980 he had created his yoga school with a strong meditation component. In 1990, he and a group of supporters tried unsuccessfully to be elected to the House of Councilors, the upper house of the Japanese legislative system. Asahara did not reach the social position that he desired, thirsting for revenge, first with small blind and blind attacks, until he "professionalised himself" ".
At the height of its activity, Aum had 10,000 followers in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. Among its members were brilliant academics, executives from various companies and young people from affluent families, tainted with the fear of imminent annihilation in the hands of a chemical attack that the United States would have believed. These brilliant young people, some of whom are now considered to have helped the group develop chemical weapons, come from extremely demanding and materialistic families and "seek a more transcendent meaning for life," Kimiaki Nishida, a professor of social psychology at the University of California. 39, Shizuoka University. "Some of them began to wonder if it was acceptable to live as their parents had lived and what should be their role in society and the true meaning of life," said the professor. When, in 1989, the Tokyo municipality recognized Aum as a religion, Asahara was free to pursue all the activities that he wanted, because the law protecting religious associations prevented the authorities from investigating "about the doctrine or l & # 39; activity. " .
It is there that they decided to start developing sarin gas stocks, a powerful chemical agent developed by the Germans during the Second World War and whose use is prohibited by the international law. This, of course, does not prevent this weapon and other chemical weapons from being used by the Americans in Vietnam and more recently by the Bashar al-Assad regime in the Syrian war, according to UN reports and the Organization for the Prohibition of Weapons Chemicals
In 1995, the Aum decided to put into practice what they had developed at the foot of Mount Fuji , where the sect had its seat. Armed with lined sarin bags and sharpened umbrellas, they headed for the Tokyo subway. It was eight o'clock in the morning on the 20th of March. Within seconds of a stop in Tokyo's financial district, five cult members hit the bags and ran away leaving thousands trapped in cars crowded with one of the most powerful pharmacies in the world. Descriptions of the survivors are troubling: strong convulsions, shortness of breath, internal bleeding and vomiting of blood are some of the scenes that the authorities experienced when, not knowing what they would find, they were heading towards the subway that day. From the staircase emerged well-dressed crowd, prepared for another day of work in the financial district of Tokyo, but all within minutes of collapse.
Agents equipped with masks washed the entire Tokyo subway after the attack. [19659010] The war that the sect Aum had announced was there, brought by theirs. "A liquid with an ink scent began to spill on the floor.One of the passengers, who was leaning against a lamp post, immediately began to undo," said France Press survivor Sakae Ito of the attack. A year before the Tokyo Metro attack, which shocked the Japanese's perception of the calm, social cohesion and security of their country, eight people died in Matsumoto, northern Japan, and more 600 were injured. who is now known to have also been committed by the men of the "Supreme Truth" sect. During the attack in Tokyo, 13 people died and more than 5,000 were injured, some with illnesses for the rest of life. According to sources close to the sect, who spoke to the "Japan Times" at the time, Asahara described the attack as "a sacred attempt to raise condemned souls to a higher stage of spirituality. ".
Haruki Murakami wrote a book about it, "Underground". Of the 60 interviews that he conducted, one was with the doctor who, that day, threw one of the sarin bags into the subway. Murakami writes: "Ikuo Hayashi made a slip to the Ministry of Science and Technology because it was the one chosen for the attack is not known, but he believes himself that it was to seal his lips.The implications in the chemical attack would make the fall impossible.At that time, Hayashi already knew too much.He was a devoted disciple of the chief, but for some reason, Asahara did not trust him.When Asahara first told him that he was going to release sarin gas, Hayashi admitted: "I could feel my heart beating in my chest – but also, where could it being my heart? "
Aum is not very different from Daesh"
After 1995, the group went into hiding and in 2000 changed the name to Aleph. this group came another: Hikari no Wa.The two are still active: Aleph is associated with the hard core of Asahara, while Hikari no Wa, d. have stigma still weighs on the formation of some of the men who stood next to Asahara, is closer to one line
The two factions still have supporters, both in Japan and in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. In March 2016, Montenegro expelled 58 people associated with Aum Shinrikyo. A month later, the Russian authorities searched for more than 25 buildings suspected to be the group's headquarters.
Fumihiro Joyu, an engineer who headed the Russian branch of Aum, was the successor of Asahara after arresting him. He wanted to change the course of things towards a more philosophical and less violent worship, but the internal friction with the other members who refused to stop worshiping the old messiah made him choose to resign. Today, he runs Hikari no Wa – and gave an interview to Tokyo Weekender magazine in 2015, 20 years after the Tokyo subway attack: "I do not see Aum as such a singular phenomenon. These groups appear cyclically in history in different forms – they can be nationalist groups, political theories like communism or a religious movement. The fundamentals are the same: we are 100% certain and our opponents are completely wrong and it is our destiny to save the world, "said Joyu, who does not consider Aum as very different from Daesh. Originally by elite men, with a hatred of the United States and an apocalyptic conception of things. "
For Fumihiro Joyu, who is struggling to escape completely from Aum but still has to leave the house with hat and sunglasses to avoid being recognized and attacked, what Asahara has – had – "is a disease that only occurs in humans". That is, a disease caused by the so-called "environmental factors" in our psyche. "In this capitalist society in which we live, we always value ourselves in relation to each other.People who do not have the weight that they believe to deserve in society suffer from a very large inferiority complex and blame those around them.This may lead to suicide or, in the case of Asahara, to murder. "
Nagaoka's son
Although they were told to deny any wealth, the old Aum members gave all their belongings to Asahara and paid for the weight of the gold rituals performed by the chief or to become the owners of the "parties" of Ashara. One of them, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Japanese news agency, said he paid about eight thousand euros to drink what was allegedly the blood of the leader. . But the sums of money were also paid for by hair pieces or water pots from the Asahara bath.
When they marked the 20th anniversary of the attack, the "Japan Times" spoke to three people close to the group. One of them was the son of Hiroyuki Nagaoka, a man who made his life a mission: to remove from the claws of the sect the young men who joined him in frightening numbers. His son, painfully ironic, was one of the greatest disciples of Asahara and Hiroyuki himself almost died of a chemical attack for constantly denouncing the "brainwashing" suffered by young people. In an anonymous interview – the journalist only writes "son" or "son of Nagaoka" – he explains what happened.
As a young man, he had always been fascinated by religious books, he found them an escape from a society where no one seemed to believe in links beyond financial ones. In 1987, he joined the service and skipped meals to offer all the money he had at Aum. Devotion paid off and quickly became the cult star representing Asahara in the media during her campaign for the Upper House. Like other members of the cult, Nagaoka's son taught him that the parents were not important because they were only ephemeral characters, a part of the earthly life, this n & # 39; Is a small step. "The connection between the members of Aum was very strong because it was spiritual, we believed that we were connected in our past lives but also in the future through reincarnation." I thought everything my father said was mean and mean, "he told the newspaper. One morning she woke up with amnesia, unable to remember what she was doing at this service, with only memories of her "civilian" time with her family. His father's number was sharp on his head and he called. Today, he says that he would have been killed or worshiped, otherwise he would be waiting for execution with the other members.
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