Today in Labor History December 19, 1900: French parliament gave to amnesty everyone who participated in the scandalous army treason trial known as the Dreyfus affair. The scandal began in 1894 when the state convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason. He was a 35-year-old French artillery officer of Jewish descent, falsely convicted for espionage and imprisoned in Devil's Island in French Guiana. Émile Zola's open letter “J'Accuse” helped build a movement of support for Dreyfus, putting pressure on the government to reopen the case. In 1899, Dreyfus was returned to France, retried and convicted again, but was pardoned and released. They eventually reinstated him as a major and he served during the World War I. Roman Polanski made a film about the affair called “J’Accuse,” after the Zola letter. However, much of Europe and the U.S. banned screenings of the film due to Polanski’s U.S. rape conviction.
Prof Michael Collyer
and I have an article in Social Sciences
'Offshoring Refugees: Colonial Echoes of the #UK-Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership' https://mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/8/451
part of the special issue The #Colonial Legacies in #Asylum and Welfare in Europe.
The UK-Rwanda proposals differ from official practices of #deportation as they have developed in liberal democracies since the 1970s.