By Ronald Schechter
July 7, 2006
On July 12, France will celebrate the centennial of the acquittal of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer whose false indictment on a charge of treason set off a political scandal in the country.
In a certain light, it would seem that the Dreyfus Affair and the environment in which it emerged has long since been buried. Yet Dreyfus has remained an iconic part of the political landscape in France. Even the openly antisemitic leader of the extreme rightwing National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has taken to comparing himself with the wronged officer. Indeed, recent acts of anti-Jewish violence over the past few years have prompted direct invocations of the persecution of Dreyfus. The most horrific of these was this past January’s Affaire Halimi, in which a street gang kidnapped a young Jew of modest means named Ilan Halimi and demanded half a million euros in ransom from his single mother. When, on advice of the police, she ceased to maintain contact with the kidnappers, they tortured her son for three weeks. He was found handcuffed and naked, with burns on 80% of his body, and he died on the way to the hospital. The police denied that this was a hate crime, and the minister of the interior claimed that the kidnappers’ motives were primarily greed, not antisemitism.
But as grisly as the Affaire Halimi was, and as insensitive and incompetent as the law enforcement authorities proved themselves to be, its connection to the Dreyfus Affair is limited: Although antisemitism was a prominent feature of the Dreyfus Affair, its deepest influence was left not in the realm of ethnic tensions but in the battle for the rights of the accused that sometimes unpopular, yet always essential pillar of any just society.
When seen from this perspective, there is little cause for celebration, as examples of affairs truly analogous to Dreyfus seem to emerge every day. Indeed, last year more than a dozen men and women from the French town of Outreau were detained on charges of pedophilia at least one for nearly a year before they were acquitted due to lack of evidence. Stories of physical abuse during interrogation, detention of up to a year, and the suicide of one suspect and attempted suicide of another have shaken national confidence in the judicial system that has been in place since the time of Napoleon. And even on these shores, there now exists a disturbing parallel to Dreyfus in the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. Many of the detainees may have planned or carried out attacks against civilians and thereby earned this designation, though officially they are merely “enemy combatants.” But how many Dreyfuses are among the hundreds held at Guantánamo? How many prisoners have committed no other crime than having an ethnicity or religion different from that of their captors? A Supreme Court ruling late last month has annulled military commissions proposed by the Bush administration, which would have evaded the basic standards expected of courts-martial of prisoners of war. But this judgment says nothing about the legality of indefinite detention of civilians.
And so it would seem that, on the centenary of this tragic fiasco, celebrations should perhaps be replaced by a detailed rendition of the story of Alfred Dreyfus with its maddening, byzantine turns of injustice to remind us how far we haven’t come in 100 years.
In September 1894, a concierge and petty spy at the German Embassy in Paris discovered a military memorandum, or bordereau, unsigned and without a named recipient, containing cryptic promises of military secrets. She conveyed the document to Hubert-Joseph Henry, an ambitious commandant, wo eagerly passed it on to his superiors at the Statistical Section the division responsible for espionage of the General Staff. One of these men, a colonel named Fabre, claimed to recognize the handwriting of the Jewish captain and, after hasty consultation with self-styled handwriting experts who came to contradictory conclusions, on October 15, Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew with expertise in artillery, was arrested for high treason.
Following two months of imprisonment, including solitary confinement, shouted accusations and other forms of psychological torture designed (in vain) to produce a confession, Dreyfus faced a closed-session court martial. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana. While there, he suffered from malarial fever, dysentery, malnutrition and severe depression. When absurd rumors of an impending rescue surfaced, his jailors had him shackled to his bed for 40 days.
In 1896, however, a new head of the Statistical Section, Georges Picquart, a lieutenant colonel, discovered evidence pointing to the real traitor. Placing letters written by a commandant in the Statistical Section next to the infamous bordereau, Picquart saw that the handwriting matched exactly. He thereby determined that the actual culprit was Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a notorious hustler with chronic gambling debts. Though himself a confirmed antisemite, Picquart was horrified at the prospect that a traitor was still at large and in all probability still selling military secrets to the Germans. He confided his discovery to a few colleagues, whose help he elicited in planning a sting that would establish Esterhazy’s guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. But these colleagues betrayed Picquart’s plan to top brass at the General Staff, who quickly transferred him to a dangerous post in Tunisia. They could not afford to have the truth of their incompetence and injustice revealed.
Meanwhile, unaware of these secret developments, Dreyfus’s wife, Lucie, and brother, Mathieu, pushed, first discreetly and then publicly, for a revision of the case. Henry whether on his own initiative or in response to orders is not clear responded by churning out forgeries designed to buttress the flimsy case against Dreyfus. By this time, information about the initial investigation had been leaked to the press. On January 13, 1898, Emile Zola published his famous “J’accuse” against the army and politicians all the way up to the President of the Republic, an act that led to his conviction for libel and consequent flight to England. Edouard Drumont, dean of French antisemitism, led the rightwing assault against the “Jewish peril” from the editor’s desk of his immensely popular scandal sheet, “La Libre Parole.” In January and February, riots against the Jews broke out in France and Algeria, and politicians running for office in the National Assembly regularly capitalized on popular antisemitism to win voters. In another travesty of justice, a court martial chose to ignore the evidence against Esterhazy and acquitted him, though he subsequently fled to Belgium just to be on the safe side. Theodor Herzl, at the time a young journalist writing from Paris, later credited the Dreyfus Affair for convincing him that the Jews were not safe in the Diaspora and that they needed their own state.
Justice was done, though belatedly and incompletely. In June 1899, thanks to tireless lobbying by the Dreyfus family and a handful of intellectuals on the left, the case was reopened. The Cour de Cassation, the highest court in France, set aside the verdict against Dreyfus and ordered a new court martial in Rennes, a quiet port city safely distant from turbulent Paris.
This time, however, the trial was to be open to spectators, including hundred of journalists from around the world, who were shocked to see the emaciated defendant appear in the courtroom. In this public setting, moreover, the judges could not suppress the fact that they had nothing but raw prejudice against Dreyfus. In a bizarre verdict, on September 9, 1899, the military tribunal reconvicted Dreyfus under “extenuating circumstances” and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. At this point, the President of the Republic stepped in and issued a pardon, though justice seems not to have been his primary motive: Paris was the site of the 1900 World’s Fair, and it was in the interest of the gross domestic product to close the case.
But the case was not closed. Although understandably ready to accept the presidential pardon after his nightmarish ordeal, by November 1903, with strong support from a parliament now dominated by radicals and socialists, Dreyfus was sufficiently confident to petition for a retrial. Finally, on July 12, 1906, the Cour de Cassation annulled the scandalous verdict of Rennes. Shortly thereafter, Dreyfus was promoted to major and awarded the Cross of the Knight of the Legion of Honor.
It was a much delayed stab at justice, though, as political philosopher Hannah Arendt observed, since the Cour de Cassation was actually not legally competent to try what was essentially a military case. Only a military tribunal could reverse the verdict of a military tribunal, and no such court ever pronounced Dreyfus not guilty. In 1985, President François Mitterrand presented a statue of Dreyfus to the …cole Militaire. The army refused to display it, and it now stands in the Tuileries gardens. It was only in 1995, more than a century after the captain’s deportation to Devil’s Island, that the army acknowledged Dreyfus’s innocence, and then only after an official army historian had caused a scandal by publicly questioning it.
Pascal Clément, the French minister of justice, recently called Dreyfus “the symbol of all victims of Justice, but also of the recognition by Justice of its errors.” On this anniversary, then, a wish for the continued pursuit of such recognition, for the errors are still being committed.
Ronald Schechter is the Margaret L. Hamilton associate professor of history at the College of William and Mary and the author of “Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815” (University of California Press, 2003).
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital is a ground-breaking
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【2006年7月13日狱委讯】大纪元记者冯长乐采访报导/2006年7月13日上午9时,贵州毕节中级法院法以“煽动颠覆国家政权罪”当庭宣判:判决前贵州《毕节日报》记者李元龙有期徒刑2年,剥夺政治权利2年。李元龙表示不服判决提出上诉。
就判决结果,李元龙的妻子杨秀敏向记者表示:今天这样的判决,我认为是个错误,太过份了。他是被冤枉的。法院并没有依法判决,依法办理。太黑暗了。我们一定要上诉的。李元龙自己当庭提出对判决不服,要上诉。他作为一个记者凭良心说话,说的是实话,真话,何罪之有?
李妻披露:这个判决根本不是法院的判决,而是幕后有人操纵。这个法院的一个法官曾经说,“这个案子的最后判决,他到底有罪无罪,我们说了不算,我们听上级的”。这到底是法制还是人治?!
她告诉记者:今天到庭的有20人左右,都是李元龙的亲人和朋友。从宣判到结束大概只有20多分钟的时间。当她看到李元龙非常消瘦,身体非常不好时,她感到心里非常难过。
参加今天宣判的李元龙的父亲告诉记者:他儿子为社会做了很多好事情,就因为他说了几句真话,写了几篇文章,表达了一下自己的真实想法,就得到这个政权的严厉处罚,这是以言治理罪,不符合宪法精神。他表示对于这个判决是难以接受,他认为法院是枉法判决,是不公正的,表示不服。
他说:宪法规定公民有言论自由,写作的自由和思想的自由。李元龙没有犯罪,他不是罪犯,他不应该承担这个罪名。他将支援他的儿子寻求真理,上诉到底!直到无罪释放!
从小就跟李元龙相识的龙涛先生表示:他很了解他,从小一起玩,听到这个判决,他很难过。他说:这样看来,在中国还不能说真话了,说了就判刑,这是法吗?想不到一个强大政权居然对一个公民的言论如此害怕,这样对待一个公民是太过份,写几篇文章就颠覆了它,也太脆弱了。完全是瞎判。让人想不到啊。
龙涛先生说:他了解到李元龙所在的毕节看守所条件非常差,即便有钱,他都让你吃不上喝不上。他曾经质问看守所:为什么这些强奸犯、毒贩子、杀人犯都可以会见到他们的家属,为什么我却不能?
李元龙的妻子表示:感谢海外媒体对李元龙案件的关注,李元龙是无罪的,思想无罪,文章无罪,言者无罪。她呼吁当局应无条件释放李元龙。他未完成的事情,她会继续做下去。
因在国际互联网发表文章被中共国安机关认定涉嫌“煽动颠覆国家政权”的《毕节日报》记者李元龙于2005年9月29号被贵州省检察院批捕。李元龙45岁。已婚。1997年由毕节老干部局考入毕节日报社。
李元龙笔名“夜狼”。近年来在国际互联网上发表一些文章抨击社会丑恶现象、表达自由意志与民主思想。被中共认定涉嫌“煽动颠覆国家政权”的“最严重”的文章是:《在思想上加入美国国籍》;《生的平凡 死的可悲》等。
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【2006年7月13日狱委讯】黄琦/2006年7月13日上午9时,贵州毕节中级法院法庭审理法官通过电话向李建强律师宣判,判决贵州《毕节日报》记者李元龙有期徒刑2年,剥夺政治权利2年。
2006年2月9日,毕节检察院以涉嫌”煽动颠覆国家政权罪”起诉李元龙,但是该案在4月份三次延期开庭。
由独立中文笔会推荐的李建强[刘路]律师向天网记者表示,李元龙获罪2年,他感到非常心酸,因为李元龙根本不构成犯罪,他既没有煽动颠覆国家政权的主观想法、也没有用任何行动去煽动颠覆国家政权;而且,国家政权也并没有因为他的文章而垮台或遭受危害。
李建强还说,这个案件的判决结果和过程都很荒唐,毕节法官和法庭本身都没有决定权,需要向上级层层汇报,所以案件拖延了这么长时间。
在李元龙案件审理过程中,大陆著名异议人士赵昕、廖双元、陈西、吴玉琴等也多次表示了抗议。2月9日,正在云南韶通养伤的赵昕,以及贵州数位异议人士星夜冒雨赶往毕节,声援李元龙。他们10日举着”夜郎还在自大”的抗议标牌,在贵州毕节中级法院门口进行了无声的抗争,并入庭旁听。
同时,多次帮助大陆异议人士,曾经在北京工作的,现在美国的中日美比较政策研究所总裁赵京先生,也曾通过六四天网向李元龙家属提供了经济帮助。
李建强律师说:李元龙是当今中国大陆一个名符其实的良心记者,在贵州当地做了很多好事,资助了很多贫困学生,同时,他还揭露腐败,帮助社会弱势群体,维护社会公正。而贵州毕节当局居然把深得民心的李元龙先生判刑2年,实在荒唐!
李建强律师还表示:对于这个判决结果,从理论上看,是完全错误的,因为李元龙根本无罪,判一天都是错的,但是考虑到中国的司法环境,这个刑期又是所有同类案子中最短了。我将征求家属意见,决定是否上诉。
毫无疑问,这些结果的取得,与记者无国界、国际笔会、独立中文笔会等组织,与李建强律师的努力,以及海内外舆论的强大压力和大陆民运人士的积极参与分不开的。
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