Shoko Asahara

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Shōkō Asahara ( Japanese 麻原 彰 晃 Asahara Shōkō ), real name Chizuo Matsumoto ( Japanese 松本 智 津 夫 Matsumoto Chizuo ; born March 2, 1955 in Kyūshū ; † July 6, 2018 in Tokyo ), was the founder and leader of the Japanese sect Ōmu Shinrikyō (Aum sect). He was sentenced to death in 2004 for his role in the poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995, and the verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court of Japan in September 2006 . The execution took place on July 6, 2018.

Life

Matsumoto was born in 1955 in a village on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, the sixth of seven children. Blind from birth in one eye and severely visually impaired in the other, he grew up in poor circumstances as the son of a tatami mat manufacturer.

Matsumoto graduated from school in 1977. After failing the Tokyo University entrance exam , he turned to studying acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine .

With his wife Tomoko, Matsumoto had four daughters and two sons.

Acting as the leader of Ōmu Shinrikyō

In the 1980s Matsumoto joined the spiritual group Agon Shu and in 1984 founded the yoga association Ōmu Shinsen no Kai . In 1987 he claimed to have achieved enlightenment during a stay in India , changed his name to Asahara Shōkō and converted his yoga club to Ōmu Shinrikyō .

Asahara borrowed his teachings from Hinduism and Buddhism , especially the altruistic ideal of Mahayana Buddhism, as well as a distorted form of the guru yoga of Vajrayana Buddhism. He also taught Phowa . With his interpretation of guru yoga , which deviated from Buddhism , he established absolute obedience to the teacher ( guru ) and established a teacher-student relationship in which only he possessed complete purity and power. Asahara was viewed by many cult members as the second coming of Jesus Christ.

With his views, Asahara increased himself into the fantasy of violence with which Phowa led people to death in order to “redeem” them and raise them to a higher spiritual level. This led to the delusion of being able to “redeem” the world by force, which led to the poison gas attack in Tokyo.

With Shinritō , the political arm of the sect, Asahara ran for the Japanese parliament in 1989 . The election ended in complete failure for him, the sect ran into financial problems and many members resigned. After this event, Asahara prophesied the imminent end of the world, which he initially set to 1997. He also ordered the production of chemical warfare agents.

On March 20, 1995 Ōmu-Shinrikyō members carried out a poison gas attack with sarin on the Tokyo subway , in which 13 people died and over 6,000 were injured, 37 of them seriously.

Legal proceedings

Asahara Shōkō was arrested for the subway attack and for his involvement in a series of murders on May 16, 1995 and sentenced to death on February 27, 2004; he took note of the verdict in silence. Despite an appeal by his defense lawyers, the death sentence was upheld by the Tokyo court. However, the lawyers also appealed against this because, according to their own statements, they had considerable doubts about Asahara's state of mind and could not once have had a reasonable conversation with him in more than 140 conversations.

In March 2006, Asahara's attorneys gave a final deadline to appeal. The reason they gave was that they could not communicate with the convict. On this basis, they filed an appeal with the Tokyo Supreme Court, which was dismissed on May 30, 2006. A medical expert appointed by the court, unlike the attorneys, concluded that Asahara understood very well what was happening around him.

After this decision, the last resort was to appeal to the Supreme Court. Asahara's attorneys filed a request to this effect on June 5, 2006, which also related to her client's poor mental state, but it was rejected on September 15, 2006 in the last instance.

On November 10, 2008, Asahara's family filed a motion to retrial in Tokyo District Court; this application was rejected in March 2009.

The execution of Asahara and six other members of the sect took place on July 6, 2018 by hanging . The remaining six convicts were executed on July 26, 2018.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Japanese sect founder is executed ( memento from March 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Netzeitung from September 15, 2006.
  2. ↑ Aum Shinrikyo: Japan executes cult leader Shoko Asahara. BBC News, July 6, 2018, accessed July 6, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c Robert Jay Lifton: Terror for Immortality , ISBN 3-446-19879-2 , pp. 27, 29, 33, 34
  4. ↑ Alexander Dvorkin: The Aum Shinri-Kyo cult of Shoko Asahara. Berlin Dialogue 2/1995.
  5. ^ 23 years after poison gas attack - sect founder Asahara executed in Japan. Der Spiegel , July 6, 2018.
  6. ^ So long, Shoko ( Memento of December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). US News & World Report, September 19, 2006.
  7. ↑ BBC World Service : Chris Hogg: Japan cult boss petition rejected , May 30, 2006
  8. ↑ Bloomberg.com: Asahara to Make Last Appeal to Avoid Death for Tokyo Gas Attack , June 5, 2006
  9. ↑ Retrial plea filed for Asahara fails. In: The Japan Times . March 19, 2009, accessed July 28, 2009 .
  10. ^ Poison gas attack on Tokyo's subway: Sect leader Asahara executed , tagesschau.de, July 6, 2018
  11. ↑ ORF.at July 26, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Asahara, Shoko
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 麻原彰晃; 松本 智 津 夫; Matsumoto, Chizuo (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese founder and former leader of the Aum sect
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Kyushu , Japan
DATE OF DEATH 6th July 2018
Place of death Tokyo , Japan