Newsgroup: it.cultura.religioni
Titolo: AUM Shinrikyo

****************************************************************
"Japan's Imperial-Era Society: From the Anti-AUM Movement to the
            Elimination of all Heterodoxies"
                 a report by Kenichi Asano
    (Professor of Journalism, Doshisha University, Japan)
Introduction
The Yasukuni Shinto Shrine, located near the Imperial Palace in Tokyo,
is dedicated to the late Premier Hideki Tojo and other Class A war
criminals of World War II. During the war, the Japanese military was
responsible for the deaths of twenty million innocent people in Asia
and the Pacific; yet at Yasukuni, Tojo and others responsible for those
deaths have been worshiped as gods in the name of Shintoism. Shintoism
is the nationalistic religion that served as the foundation for the
imperialist, militarist view of Japanese history and society in which
Asian peoples were indoctrinated prior to and during the World War II
era. Under Shintoism, both Japanese citizens and conquered Asians were
coerced into accepting their status as children of the then-living god,
Emperor Hirohito, and into participating in the creation of the Japan-
dominated "Great East Asian Prosperity Sphere." After World War II,
both Hirohito and Shintoism evaded responsibility and accountability
for their role in the onset and conduct of the war. Indeed, Shintoism
has survived as a religious entity in the post-war era. A recent movie
entitled "Pride" that glorified Tojo attained great popularity, while a
comic book that describes World War II as a holy war fought to free
Asian countries from the Western colonial powers sold like hot cakes.
Our society, while not requiring accountability of Emperor Hirohito and
Shintoism fifty-four years ago, today demands the dissolution of AUM
Shinrikyo as a religious corporation and blatantly tramples on the
residence rights of faithful AUM adherents. These actions are based on
the prosecution's charges against some AUM members of murdering the
family of a Yokohama lawyer and of conducting two sarin nerve gas
attacks that together killed twenty people. Ironically, while the
detestable, nationalistic Shintoism that played a central role in
Japan's aggressive and murderous policies during the war has remained
intact, AUM followers are being mercilessly persecuted and their high-
profile members are being tried and convicted one after another.
Although there is a national taboo against recognizing Emperor
Hirohito's culpability for the war, a widespread public consensus has
already emerged on what to do with Shoko Asahara and his followers,
even before they have been convicted of any crimes: "AUM members should
be hanged." Few people speak out for the human rights of AUM followers.
Why is AUM Hated?
In early September of 1999, the anchorman of a nationwide news telecast
on the TV-Asahi network surprised himself, as well as his listeners,
with the following statistic: the Jinja Honcho is the largest formal
religion in Japan, with a total of seventy million followers. If this
statistic is accurate, it follows that most adults in Japan must be
adherents of the Jinja Honcho. In fact, the Jinja Honcho is the same
religion as Shintoism and controls 79,184 Shinto shrines throughout the
country. There are also a number of different sects and schools in
Shintoism, including some independent shrines such as the Yasukuni
Shrine. According to The 1998 Religious Almanac of Japan, the
statistics on religion in Japan are as follows:
104,553,179 Shintoist
95,117,730 Buddhist
1,761,835 Christian
11,214,331 other religions
212,647,075 Total.
Since there are only 120 million people in Japan, these statistics seem
to indicate that most Japanese adults believe in both Shintoism and
Buddhism. Despite these statistics, however, I believe that only a very
small percentage of the Japanese population is sincerely and piously
religious. Indeed, the fact that only a little more than one percent of
its population is Christian makes Japan unique in the world.
My own experience illustrates this point. In 1966, I had the
opportunity to study as an American Field Service International
Scholarship student at a high school in Springfield, Missouri. Although
at that time most Japanese were atheists, as they are now, my father's
family line was Shintoist, and indeed, several of my relatives are
Shinto priests. Because of this, I unthinkingly wrote "Shintoist" in
the religion blank on my personal data form. Because the members of my
host family were earnest and pious Baptists, they took this seriously
and attempted to persuade me to study more about Shintoism and then to
abjure it.
In 1972, I became a correspondent for The Kyodo News, one of the most
notable news agencies in Japan. Since then, throughout my career as a
journalist, I have had the opportunity to observe and reflect upon
religious issues and the influence of religion. From February 1989 to
July 1992, for example, I was chief of the Jakarta branch office of The
Kyodo News, a situation which afforded me the opportunity to live in
and observe an Islamic society. When I was in East Timor, I learned
about how influential Catholicism was there; and, when I covered
Southeast Asia, I learned and then wrote about Buddhism in Burma.
In many countries it is a normal state of affairs to have different
religions and ethnic groups living together. However, in Japan there is
much less religious and ethnic diversity. The Yamato race comprises
approximately ninety-eight percent of the Japanese population;
foreigners, including Koreans, make up less than one percent; and other
Japanese minorities, such as the Ainumoshiri and Ryukyu races, make up
the other one percent. All but a very small percentage of the total
population are more or less atheist.
It was in this homogeneous cultural and religious context that AUM
Shinrikyo emerged in the late 1980s as a new religion and gained
popularity, especially among the younger generation. While I was living
in Jakarta they participated in a national election, which aided their
expansion considerably. AUM Shinrikyo members appeared on a popular
television debate show, "Asamade Nama Terebi," and won an overwhelming
victory over their opponents from another religious group. I was told
that the emcee of the program even praised AUM Shinrikyo. I recall that
AUM founder Shoko Asahara's books sold like hot cakes and were stacked
up not only in the bookstore of Doshisha University, but also in that
of Kyoto University, one of the most prestigious universities in Japan.
After I became a professor of journalism at Doshisha University in
1994, I had the opportunity to present speeches for various occasions,
and I made it a rule to distribute questionnaires asking the audience
for the names of persons they wished to hear as a speaker in the
future. Mr. Asahara's name was always near the top of the list.
AUM Shinrikyo came under severe public criticism on March 22, 1995. On
that day, the police raided AUM facilities across the country and
arrested a number of followers in connection with the Tokyo subway
gassing incident that had occurred two days earlier. AUM became the
target of additional public censure when it was accused of
responsibility for the 1989 murder of a lawyer and his family. In
connection with these and other incidents, AUM's founder and almost one
hundred of his followers have been indicted. Indeed, some of his
followers have already been found guilty, despite the fact that Shoko
Asahara's trial is not yet concluded, and despite the fact that it is
not at all clear whether he ordered his followers as a group to
perpetrate these incidents.
The Japanese public, however, has already concluded that AUM as a group
is guilty and has been engaging in discrimination and harassment
against those who follow or formerly followed AUM Shinrikyo. Thus
innocent, rank-and-file AUM followers who have never been accused of
any crimes are being deprived of their rights to live as they wish.
In our society, having a deep religious faith is regarded as bizarre.
People tend to worship money and success instead. Indeed, a member of
the foreign press at one time described the Japanese with contempt
as "economic animals," and I cannot completely deny this. In addition,
many Japanese people detest heterodoxies in any form. In the past,
leftists have indiscriminately murdered innocent people while
attempting to foment a communist revolution, and they have also killed
each other in internal struggles. Gangsters and participants in
organized crime also employ violence to achieve their purposes. Yet no
group has been hated more than AUM, and the reason for this is that AUM
Shinrikyo is a religion beyond the comprehension of ordinary Japanese
citizens.
The modern democratic principle that the accused is presumed innocent
until he or she has been proven guilty has yet to take deep root in
Japanese society. Worse still, there is as yet little understanding in
Japan that journalists and the press should keep watch on officials
such as the investigative authorities in order to prevent abuses of
power. Instead, the Japanese media has joined the authorities in
concluding that AUM's leader, Shoko Asahara, in his despair
masterminded this series of deadly incidents. The media has thus played
an important role in shaping the public's opinion that AUM's teachings
are dangerous enough to provoke homicide.
Few people have dared to object to this widely held opinion. The
situation was accurately described in an article that appeared on the
front page of The New York Times on August 27. This article, written by
Mr. Calvin Sims and partially based on an interview with me, is
entitled "Still Furious at Cult, Japan Violates Its Rights" and
highlights the un-constitutionality of the ongoing anti-AUM
discrimination.
"Heads of municipalities said that although they knew their actions
were unlawful, they would reject residency applications by AUM
followers," Mr. Sims said to me, "In Japan, if an official takes an
unlawful action, which authority should prosecute and punish it?" I had
no choice but to answer, "The Ministry of Justice, I suppose."
The journalist started his lengthy article by quoting a man who climbed
the hill behind AUM's buildings in order to peer through the
surrounding trees and spy on them. "This is bad, very bad," he said.
Yet Mr. Sims remarked on the fact that no one criticizes the way in
which the government is treating AUM followers except a few human
rights activists and Constitutional scholars, whose comments were also
quoted in his newspaper piece.
Mr. Sims' article also used comments made by an anonymous police
official, as well as by a named assistant chief of the Civil Liberties
Bureau of the Ministry of Justice. This man told Sims: "We can't take
any actions without a formal request," adding, "Both local residents
and AUM followers have human rights." For the AUM perspective, the
article quoted comments from Hiroshi Araki of AUM Shinrikyo's public
relations department. Additionally, the article detailed harassment and
violence perpetrated on AUM members by local residents and gangsters.
In general, the article was well balanced in describing the current
situation of AUM Shinrikyo.
Reluctance of Government Officials and Newspaper Reporters to Conduct
an Inside Investigation of AUM
You speak highly of us because we were the only newspaper to visit that
former guest house to interview them. But I, for one, was opposed to
that interview. I didn't go with the others because, if I had, I would
have known there was no danger, and I knew how the people here felt
about AUM.
Even though members of the municipal assembly inspected the building
and found it to be safe, it does not matter because the local residents
are vehemently demanding that AUM vacate.
The first comment was made on August 4, 1999 by a young Asahi Shinbun
reporter who works in the Utsunomiya branch office and who reports on
Tochigi prefectural government issues. The second was made a week
earlier, on July 28, by a member of the municipal assembly of Otawara,
Tochigi Prefecture, while he was attending a meeting of the municipal
assembly's special committee for anti-AUM measures, chaired by Takeo
Yanagida.
Shortly after two children of AUM Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara moved
to Otawara on June 25 and applied for residency, city officials
announced that their applications were being denied. As illustrated by
the preceding two quotes, journalists and members of the municipal
assembly stated that they would not conduct any investigation of the
AUM building because if they did, they would have to acknowledge that
there was no danger. In the midst of this and other unjust anti-AUM
campaigns by local residents, the press and members of the municipal
assembly, which should be scrutinizing the conduct of local
authorities, refrained from performing their duty in this vital
function.
Most people in Otawara were perfectly aware that the AUM members living
there posed no imminent danger. However, the city government upheld the
rejection of their applications for residency even thought it was
clearly illegal to do so. Other than in the interests of public
welfare, the only reason officials were able to give for their actions
was that they sympathized with Otawara residents' unrest and uneasiness.
The local people themselves are frightened by the presence of the AUM
members, although they cannot say exactly why. Agitated by the
information released by the media and the authorities, they are
effectively depriving AUM followers of their basic civil liberties.
Shops display "NO AUM" signs on their facades; newspaper vendors refuse
to sell them newspapers; gas stations refuse to sell them fuel; public
baths refuse to admit them; municipal authorities refuse to provide
them with garbage and sewage disposal services or even to read their
water meter. Almost all lifelines are being cut off. Indeed, signs held
by local residents demonstrating outside the AUM buildings read "Get
off the earth" and "Go to outer space."
Japan is supposedly a country governed by law, yet what is occurring
here is just the opposite. Local residents view all AUM followers as
deserving of no human rights and wish to be rid of them. I find this
mass hysteria much more frightening than the AUM movement itself.
In 1997 there occurred in the city of Kobe, in the Hyogo Prefecture, a
series of incidents involving the murder or injuring of infants. Soon
afterwards, false news reports appeared claiming that juvenile crimes
were dramatically increasing in number. Basing its actions on the Kobe
incidents and the news reports, the government attempted to make the
Juvenile Law Code more stringent. However, it was discovered that there
were no actual statistics to back up the reported upsurge in juvenile
delinquency. More recently, Taku Yamazaki and other members of the
Lower House have used the massacre of East Timorese citizens by
Indonesian army troops as a pretext to immediately lift the ban on
sending Japanese peacekeeping forces abroad. Ironically, they show no
repentance for any responsibility they might have in the present
situation: in 1976, the then-dominant LDP Party supported the Suharto
military regime in Indonesia, giving it tacit permission to invade East
Timor.
The strategy of conservative reactionaries appears to be to foment fear
in order to create bad legislation, without regard for appearances or
consequences. The neo-fascists in Japan are using the AUM situation as
a pretext for increasing their control over Japanese society as a whole
and to expedite the creation of a police state. What we must oppose is
not AUM Shinrikyo so much as the growth of a nationalist power that
takes advantage of the AUM situation to build a regime that could
easily restrict the human rights of its citizens and suppress anti-
establishment and grass roots movements.
Local Residents are Unable to Explain or Justify their Anti-AUM
Campaigns
On August 4, 1999, the Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Media
Conduct, of which I am a director, conducted a field investigation in
and around an AUM complex in Tochigi Prefecture. Nineteen people who
came from all over the country participated in this exercise. We were
also joined by Mr. James Lewis, an American scholar of religion.
Our first stop was at a complex in which AUM followers resided, located
in the Sakuyama Ward of Otawara. As we approached, we observed many
signs and posters of various colors and sizes erected on the street,
all with the slogan "We don't want AUM."
In front of the AUM building there was a "unity barracks," so-named to
symbolize the solidarity of local residents against AUM; about ten
older people were present. Behind the barracks was a small hill. Half
way up this hill, trees had been cut down and a shack had been built.
From this shack several people were peering through binoculars, keeping
a vigilant watch over the AUM complex. Many signs with vitriolic
slogans were fastened to the wall of this observation post: "We don't
want AUM;" "We shall never forgive you! Get out immediately;" and "You
murderers are our enemies!" We were welcomed by two men representing
AUM Shinrikyo. The first was Mr. Nagayama, whom I had first met in 1995
at Aoyama General headquarters, on the occasion of my interviewing Mr.
Fumihiro Joyu, the former chief of the group's public relations
department. The second was Mr. Akitoshi Hirosue, the head of AUM's
office for emergency measures against anti-AUM movements.
These two officials had been using a video camera to record the
outrageous anti-AUM activities of Otawara's residents. At a later
conference entitled "The Public Welfare Vs. the Rejection of AUM
Residency Applications," held on September 15 in Utsunomiya, Tochigi
Prefecture, I had the opportunity of seeing their film. Although the
video was only fifteen minutes in length, I found its contents
profoundly disturbing.
On the video, one Otawara resident shouted, "Go back to your mothers.
Except none of you have families, do you?" Another asked, "Don't you
realize that you are being used by Asahara?" A third said, "You'll
never succeed. Asahara will exploit you for the rest of your life,"
while another yelled at the AUM followers, "You're just practicing
yoga, so why do you call it religion?" Singling out one particular AUM
follower and calling his name without using an honorific title, another
resident loudly claimed, "I know you! Don't look away from me!" And
finally, contemptuously, a resident suggested, "Why don't you kill
yourself! You've got nowhere else to go, nowhere else to live!" In
addition to this evidence of the verbal harassment to which AUM
followers were subjected, the video included footage of an incident in
which a right-wing activist deliberately smashed his truck into the
closed gates of the AUM compound, injuring two followers who were
attempting to open the gates. Luckily, the two individuals were not
seriously harmed, although the incident could have been fatal to one or
both of them. Another scene on this video showed a group of right-wing
activists standing on their sound truck and throwing juice cans at the
compound. One AUM follower was hit in the face, resulting in an injury
serious enough to require stitches.
After spending some time in the AUM building, I returned to the "unity
barracks" and interviewed some of the elderly Otawara residents I found
there. I asked them why they felt justified in telling the AUM
followers to leave. Their responses varied, from "Please ask our
leaders," to "Because it's my turn to be here," to "I can't answer that
because those in charge are not here." By those in charge they seemed
to mean the head of the Sakuyama Ward committee for anti-AUM measures.
Then I dared to ask them, "Are you really so frightened of those AUM
followers over there? What do you find so frightening about them?" They
made various telling replies to my questions. "They do terrible things;
they murdered innocent people with sarin, yet they show no remorse;
they act as if they did nothing wrong," one said. Another
complained, "They lack common courtesy. They don't say hello, and some
of them even try to hide their faces from us or block our view of them
with a barrier. They use a hidden camera to take videos of us."
Ironically, these Otawara residents had completely ignored the fact
that they were the ones who were spying on AUM followers and harassing
them. How can anyone be expected to be courteous in such a situation?
In my opinion, it is not just the anti-AUM movement in Otawara that is
being orchestrated by the government, because televised coverage of
anti-AUM campaigns in other prefectures show that they are very similar.
Is the Media Under the Control of the PSIA?
AUM Shinrikyo was dissolved as a religious corporation in 1995, and the
following year its headquarters facilities at the base of Mount Fuji
were confiscated. As a result, the members were dispersed into small,
scattered groups across the country. The group claims to have a total
of approximately five hundred monks and nuns and one thousand lay
practitioners.
In February of 1999, the national media began to report that a
resurgence of AUM activity was causing trouble with local residents in
various locations. Ostensibly in response to this situation, the
National Police Agency and the Public Security Investigation Agency
(PSIA) began organizing anti-AUM campaigns. The timing coincided with
the government's attempts to pass certain controversial legislation in
the National Assembly.
Prior to the outbreak of the trouble in Otawara, the residency
applications of 23 AUM followers in Sanwa in the Ibaraki Prefecture had
been rejected by that city's authorities. Consequently, the mayor of
Otawara was quoted as saying that, although he was aware that the
action was unlawful, Otawara city officials also would reject AUM
members' notifications that they were moving to Otawara.
The news of the AUM members' notification that they were moving into a
new residence in Otawara was scooped by Shimotsuke Shinbun, the town's
local newspaper. The inflammatory front page headline read: "AUM
Establishes Foothold in Otawara." This article was reinforced, in the
general news pages of the paper, by others with equally alarming
headlines like: "Residents Stand Up to Fight;" "Resident Anger and Fear
Result in Emergency Meeting of Ward Heads;" "Why Otawara?" and "AUM's
Sudden Appearance Shocks Residents." Mr. Yoshiyuki Kohno, who for eight
months was treated by the police and the media as the perpetrator of
the 1994 Matsumoto sarin gassing incident, commented to me: "During the
last war, all of the newspapers must have been like this."
AUM Shinrikyo as a group has done nothing unlawful since it was raided
in March of 1995. Ordered to formally dissolve as a religious
corporation, it is now a private organization, neither controlled nor
protected by law. A strict surveillance of its followers has been
maintained by both the NPA and the PSIA, and their arrests on petty
charges and separate charges are everyday occurrences. They are
arrested, for example, on a charge of trespassing in a private
residence if they try to distribute their leaflets in the mailboxes of
an apartment building. Or they are arrested if their actual addresses
are found to be different from those recorded on their residency
certificates.
When I interviewed Mr. Kohno in July, he observed that if Japan is
indeed a country ruled by law, then that law must be applied
dispassionately and impartially to all citizens without exception and
without discrimination. If this is not the case, it would not be
possible for citizens to question or criticize when necessary the
actions of the police and the media, the very institutions that were
responsible for Mr. Kohno being unjustly blamed for the Matsumoto sarin
attack.
"AUM followers are being unfairly arrested because they try to
distribute flyers," Mr. Kohno said. "Municipal officials announce that
although they are aware that their action is unconstitutional, they
will reject AUM's move- in notifications. That this can happen
demonstrates that this is not a country ruled by impartial law applied
to all citizens, but is in fact a lawless country. On the one hand, the
authorities do nothing about powerful organized crime and the gangsters
who blatantly engage in illegal activities. On the other hand, because
they know that AUM is powerless to resist, they persecute and harass
its members for engaging in activities that are legal."
Even though his wife remains in a coma as a result of the Matsumoto
sarin gassing and he himself still suffers from the aftereffects of the
gas, Mr. Kohno nevertheless affirms: "I want to know who is going to
distinguish the AUM followers from ordinary citizens. People scream
that AUM should get out, but everyone has the freedom of their own
beliefs and their own thoughts. Our law maintains that the courts
should pronounce punishment, but as we saw in the Wakayama poisoned
curry murder, the public unofficially enacts sanctions against
suspects. I believe it is wrong to punish suspects before they have
even been tried."
Is AUM Being Used as a Pretext for Erecting a Police State?
The anti-AUM campaign in Otawara has triggered similar movements across
the country. More than half the wards in Tokyo, for example, have
declared their intent to prohibit the use of public facilities by AUM
followers. Municipalities and local assemblies have requested that the
national government draft AUM-specific legislation and add amendments
to the Anti-subversive Activities Law.
It seems evident that, with municipalities formally refusing to allow
new AUM followers to move in and attempting to force those already in
residence to leave, and now with their added request for AUM-specific
legislation, the official goal is to make it impossible for AUM
followers to practice their faith indeed to eliminate AUM Shinrikyo
altogether as a viable religion in Japan.
This has been made possible because the media and the PSIA successfully
incited an anti-AUM movement among the general public that has
culminated in the demand for anti-AUM measures. The government is now
citing this public demand as justification for creating AUM-specific
legislation.
On September 8, 1999, the press reported on an announcement by Chief
Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka that the government was preparing a
bill for submission to a special session of the Diet to be held later
in the fall. Originally this bill was intended to expand the Anti-
subversive Activities Law to cover cult groups as well as political
organizations. In the process of forming a coalition consisting of the
LDP, the Liberal Party, and the New Komeito, however, the New Komeito
rejected the idea of amending the existing law. As a result, the
government is now aiming at drafting new legislation specifically
against AUM. This law draft has passed the House of Representatives in
November.
Although details are still unclear as to the substance of this new law,
it has been reported that its target is a group "that has committed
indiscriminate mass murder in the past and yet remains basically
unchanged." Obviously, this is AUM Shinrikyo. The new law will allow
both surveillance and regulation of activities of targeted groups,
including groups whose activities are so inoffensive that it would not
ordinarily be considered necessary to dissolve them.
The PSIA, once at the top of a list of several government offices
scheduled for closing, has been resurrected in the wake of the AUM
incidents of recent years. In 1996, it requested that AUM be formally
outlawed under the Anti-subversive Activities Law, but that request was
denied by the Public Security Examination Commission in January 1997.
Indeed, this extra- ministerial board of the Ministry of Justice
focused attention again on the possibility of discontinuing the PSIA.
To insure its survival, the agency was instrumental in manipulating the
media into inciting a public outcry against a supposedly resurgent AUM,
ultimately resulting in the current demands for anti-AUM legislation.
If this new legislation is passed by the Diet, the PSIA will enlarge
both its organization and its breadth of operation, with powers of
surveillance over religious organizations, civil rights groups, and
other similar entities. Under the current law, PSIA officials are only
allowed to accompany law enforcement authorities on raids on suspect
groups, and are not authorized to carry out their own raids
independently of law enforcement.
It is imperative to keep in mind that the passage of this new law will
follow the relatively recent passage of the Organized Crime Counter-
measures Law. Considered together, these two new laws represent a
fundamental change in how the legal principles concerning crime and the
charging with and prosecution of a crime will be defined in the
Constitution, in criminal law, and in the Criminal Procedural Code.
With the passage of these two laws, the emphasis will shift from
consideration on an individual basis to consideration on a group basis.
These laws, supposedly passed to strengthen police powers in order to
preserve public order, will, in effect, allow the central government to
transform Japan into a police state.
Intent on strengthening its control of citizens through control of the
groups to which they might belong, the government first enacted the
anti- organized crime law a law the public was reluctant to oppose.
Encounter- ing little public opposition to this, they have now, under
the continued guise of preserving peace and order, drafted the proposed
anti-AUM legislation.
In the meantime, the media continues to release sensationalistic AUM-
related information fed to them by the police and the PSIA, and
designed to incite further anti-AUM sentiment among the public. For
example, on July 29, 1999, Asahi Shinbun included the following in a
story: "It (AUM Shinrikyo) has approximately 2,100 followers in forty
major locations across the country....There are about forty businesses
associated with AUM Shinrikyo, including computer-related companies
that grossed seven billion yen in 1998." On September 29, in a similar
story, Asahi Shinbun related that "Recently AUM Shinrikyo has
established a number of footholds across the country and is
consolidating its strength. This is causing distress in those
municipalities where it has located, with the result that some of these
municipalities have rejected AUM followers' residency applications."
To counteract this negative and incendiary publicity, AUM Shinrikyo, as
a private corporation, has published a small book entitled The Present
Situation of AUM Shinrikyo and the Problems it Faces. The book explains
that AUM followers are only looking for places where they can reside in
peace and pursue their religious way of life. The media, however,
rarely gives AUM followers the chance to make their voices heard in
their own defense.
We Cannot Fight for AUM?
The Liaison Committee on Human Rights and Mass Media Conduct held a
conference September 13-15, 1999 in Tokyo and Utsunomiya to discuss AUM-
related issues. At the meeting in Shinjuku on the 14th, a
representative of the Committee to Abolish the Anti-subversive
Activities Law stated: "I share with others here the concerns about
basic civil liberties that are raised by a question such as 'Do AUM
followers have human rights?' At the same time, I am bothered by the
fact that AUM followers as a group have not shown remorse or taken
responsibility for the crimes they have committed. For this reason I
cannot wholeheartedly support the movement in opposition to the anti-
AUM legislation."
More than a few people at the conference concurred with this sentiment,
saying they find it difficult to sympathize with the plight of the AUM
followers because they have not taken responsibility nor apologized for
the crimes of which AUM has been accused. These people accept
completely and uncritically what they have read in the media concerning
AUM. Ironically, when it comes to the suppression of neo-leftists or to
the problems related to nuclear electric power plants, they question
the media coverage and call it "neo-bourgeois." Yet concerning AUM
coverage by the media, these same people say it is unfair or
exaggerated to claim the media distorts or manipulates the facts. Some
representatives of the media, for example, have said that in some AUM
trials guilty verdicts were handed down, while others reported that in
those same cases the accused admitted their crimes.
Leftists in charge of anti-establishment movements in Japan have
labeled AUM followers as fascists because, they say, those followers
have committed terrorist acts against human beings. Again, they have
accepted without question the information the police and the media have
released. I asked them, "When did your political group decide that AUM
members were fascists? Was it before or after 6:00 a.m. on March 22,
1995, when the police initially raided AUM?" They would not answer me,
because they know that the answer is that they began to view AUM
negatively only after the police raids began. AUM's teachings and
practices have not changed since that date in 1995, but the way AUM is
perceived by others has changed.
Without question, a series of atrocious incidents took place. More than
four hundred AUM followers were arrested, and approximately one hundred
of them were indicted and are being tried. Some have already been found
guilty. But by now, the media-fabricated version that AUM founder Shoko
Asahara ordered his followers to commit all of these crimes and that
the doctrines and teachings of AUM Shinrikyo were a factor in these
crimes being committed has become widely and unquestioningly accepted
as the truth. In reality, whether this is in fact the true version of
events has yet to be demonstrated. To find out, we must wait for the
results of Mr. Asahara's trial.
When the PSIA requested that the Anti-subversive Activities Law be used
to outlaw AUM Shinrikyo, I was elected as one of five members of an
observer group to attend the hearings. I attended all of the sessions,
and was present on January 31, 1997 when the Public Security
Examination Commission rejected the request.
Conservative politicians and various media representatives who are
under the government's thumb have recently argued that those
intellectuals who opposed the use of the Anti-subversive Activities Law
against AUM Shinrikyo should be held responsible for its resurgence.
Obviously this does not make sense, since those who made this unanimous
decision, the members of the Public Security Examination Commission,
had been appointed by the Prime Minister and approved by the Diet.
Unfortunately, the law was not at that point abolished and the PSIA
disbanded, as it properly should have been.
Mr. Kohno, the victim of the 1994 Matsumoto sarin nerve gas attack, has
given us an effective lesson on human rights. In our opposition to the
new anti-AUM law, we must make the issue of human rights the
unequivocal foundation for our stance, just as we did when we opposed
the Anti- subversive Activities Law. By this I mean that crime and the
devising of deterrents to crime must be considered in the context of
society as a whole; the effects of efforts to punish or deter crime on
the rights of the members of our society must be considered seriously.
Of equal importance, it is imperative that the government never has the
right to judge or regulate the religious thoughts or beliefs of any
suspects.
The other day I met a friend of mine, a television journalist, who had
just returned to Japan after a lengthy absence in the United States. He
said, "I am frightened of Japanese who are yelling hysterically about
being scared of AUM. It seems pretty dangerous to me for the whole
country to be heading in such a totalitarian direction." But another
situation frightens me even more. We are faced today with a new law
that denies the post-World War II legal system and attempts to regulate
and control the very thoughts and beliefs of a group, yet the leaders
of civil and human rights groups state that they will not oppose this
law because AUM has not yet apologized. They fiddle, Rome burns.
Sent via Deja.com 
http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

    (Professor of Journalism, Doshisha University, Japan)
1 ) Nous sommes sur un forum francophone ( fr.soc.religion )
2 ) Ce forum n'est pas dédié à la promotions des sectes,
 et surtout pas celles qui comme AUM sont particulièrement nocives.
 N'oublions pas que c'est la secte meurtrière AUM dirigée par un
 dangereux maniaque ( se prétendant réincarnation de Jesus, bouddha,
 etc... ) qui a deversé du gaz sarin dans le metro de Tokyo.
3 ) S'il vous reste un peu de décence, évitez d'usurper le nom du
 pandita Naropa.
--
Patrick
http://pema.free.fr/
 ( in french )
sects in buddhism 
http://pema.free.fr/sects.html
 ( in french but
many links to english sites )