I chose to title one of the new t-shirts "J'Accuse...!" - a loose allusion to the famous Dreyfus Affair out of French history.
In a nutshell, the phrase "I Accuse...!" comes from the title of an open letter, published in 1898, by the famous French writer Emile Zola to the president of France regarding a French soldier wrongly convicted of treason.
It's a long story, and my intent was simply to harken back to accusing governments of knowingly hiding the truth. Then I decided to Google the phrase "j'accuse" to make sure I got it exactly right, and happened on a Web page describing the history of the Dreyfus Affair and Zola's article.
Well. In reading the description of the Dreyfus Affair, it gave me the chills. Oddly, considering Dreyfus was Jewish (and anti-Semitism played heavily in his story), the description made me immediately think of the US government's Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Let me share a bit:
The Affair, "one of the great commotions of history," in the words of historian Barbara W. Tuchman, arose out of the 1894 arrest and conviction for treason of Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery officer in the French army. Dreyfus, who was completely innocent, received an unfair trial at his court martial; the prosecution's case had no substance, and the conviction was based on false, supposedly incriminating documents, not introduced into evidence or disclosed to Dreyfus, which were secretly delivered to the trial judges after they had retired to consider their verdict. Dreyfus was sentenced to life imprisonment and expelled from the army. He was incarcerated off the coast of South America on Devil's Island from 1895 until 1899.One of Zola's main concerns about the affair was the following:
At the time of the arrest and trial the army officers responsible for the prosecution truly believed Dreyfus was guilty of the crime charged. By 1896, however, they knew they had made a catastrophic mistake. Nevertheless, high-ranking officers on the army's General Staff and officers in military intelligence, fearful that public exposure of the injustice done Dreyfus would embarrass the army, engaged in a gigantic coverup which featured perjury, forgery, and obstruction of justice. The conspirators, including at least eight generals, even protected and assisted Commandant Ferdinand Esterhazy, the army infantry officer who, as they knew by 1896, had actually committed the crime for which Dreyfus had been wrongfully convicted.
[Zola] accused the tribunal that convicted Dreyfus of "condemning an accused person on the strength of a secret document"Sound familiar?
I know, it'll piss some people off comparing the two affairs, and good. I'll bet Zola would love the irony. But I have no problem comparing the two, as civil and human rights have a funny way of exacting poetic justice. Eventually, everyone realizes respect for such rights benefits us all. Well, at least we can hope they realize.
You can read the original French version of Zola's letter and the English translation here.
PS This story is also a lesson in the power of good journalism and what journalism should be about, in my view.
