TOKYO, May 22 (Kyodo) - The AUM Shinrikyo cult on Tuesday opened up its facilities and cult members' apartment rooms to local residents, Kyodo News and other mass media.
Fumihiro Joyu, a leading member of the AUM Shinrikyo cult said that there was ''no special reason'' for opening the facilities, located in three apartment buildings in Minami-Karasuyama in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, which are regarded by public security authorities as the cult's headquarters.
''I would like you to see (the facilities) because 'seeing is believing','' 38-year-old Joyu explained.
The cult distributed papers on regulations of its activities which referred to AUM founder Shoko Asahara, who is being tried on a number of charges, including the March 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway which killed 12 people and injured thousands.
In the regulations, it referred to 46-year-old Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, and said, ''We do not deify him or see him as absolute as to justify the crimes (committed). But we purely evaluate and succeed the religious components (of Asahara's teachings).''
Police and investigators from the Public Security Investigation Agency have each searched the facilities on two occasions.
Residents living in the neighborhood have set up a council and have been conducting protest activities and collecting signatures for petitions seeking cult members to move out of the apartments. But prospects for a resolution have been bleak.
One of the reasons for opening up its facilities to the public is believed to be the cult's wish to shake off its image that it still strongly beholds the beliefs of Asahara.
According to the cult, members started moving into the three apartment in December last year after the 76-year-old male owner of the apartments offered to rent them out to the cult.
Joyu and 46 other cult members live in the three apartments, the cult said.
The cult pays for a monthly rent of 2.5 million yen and food and textbook costs totaling about 5 million yen per month through donations made to the cult.
The first floor of one of the three apartments has been transformed into a training-hall, where an intensive training seminar was held in early May attended by about 190 people.
AP-NY-05-22-01 0235EDT
Copyright 2001 The Kyodo News Service.