The incomprehensible began early in the morning as members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo ("supreme truth") entered several cars of the Tokyo subway on March 20, 1995.
With filed umbrella tips they pierced plastic bags filled with sarin and let the deadly nerve gas free. Shortly thereafter pictures of subway passengers staggering out of the Kasumigaseki station with bloody foam emitting from their mouths were seen around the world.
Twelve people died and more than 5,500 were injured in the attack. Ten years later, many of the victims continue to suffer the psychological, physical and financial consequences of that fateful day. They also feel abandoned and betrayed by the government.
"For the past 10 years, we have been making the same demands for government aid but to this day the government has barely lifted a finger to help us," complained widow Shizue Takahashi to the Japanese press agency Kyodo.
Her husband, a subway employee, had removed the plastic bags containing the sarin and died for his efforts. Today, widow Takahashi heads a group of victims of the attack and their families. "Anyone could have been a victim in that fatal 1995 incident. Is it right for the government just to pity us, think we were just unlucky at that moment and do nothing?" Takahashi said.
With the attacks the cult wanted to prevent a planned police raid against its headquarters at the base of Mount Fuji. Partially-blind cult leader Shoko Asahara had built up a huge following, with thousands of young people viewing him as a charismatic father figure, with whom they felt understood, and were offered an alternative to the obligations of rigid, Japanese society.
The cult had used to its advantage a spiritual vacuum in Japan following the economic boom years which drove a whole generation to new religions such as Aum. Since the attacks Asahara is viewed as an inhumane monster and his followers, many of them innocent, are considered public enemies.
Last year, Asahara, whose civil name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was sentenced to death for his role in the sarin poisoning and other deaths. He was the last to be sentenced of the 189 accused in the attacks. Twelve were sentenced to death, though none of the executions have so far been carried out.
Asahara's lawyers are appealing his sentence, the proceedings of which will likely drag on for years.
Meanwhile, the remaining 1,650 followers of the cult, which has been renamed Aleph, are under constant observation.
Some victims are attempting to seek compensation from the bankrupt estates of companies owned by Aum by taking them to civil court.
They say they have no choice, as social assistance for urgently needed medical and psychological help for thousands of victims is still hard to come by.
The cult's target was the system, the government, said one man whose sister was crippled by the sarin. Still, the government has not done anything to help her, he said.
The sarin has reduced the mental capabilities of his sister to that of an infant. Others suffer from eye problems, headaches and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with symptoms such as nausea, panic attacks and sleeplessness.
"What we do is something that the government should provide, not a private group such as us," said a spokesman of the Recovery Support Center in Tokyo, which provides annual free medical check-ups to the victims of the subway attack.
The day before the 10-year commemoration of the attack, survivors are planning a march and other gatherings to appeal to the government to assist them in their recovery and call attention to their plight.
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