The China Mail - French lawmakers want Dreyfus promoted 130 years after scandal

The parliamentarians, led by former prime minister Gabriel Attal, said a law to that effect would be an act of reparation for Dreyfus, whose condemnation came against a backdrop of the late 19th century's rampant anti-Semitism in the French army and wider society.

It would, said Attal, also send the signal that the fight against anti-Semitism continues today, more than a century after the Dreyfus affair divided French society and gave rise to writer Emile Zola's famous "J'accuse" pamphlet in favour of the disgraced captain.

"The anti-Semitism that targeted Alfred Dreyfus is not in the distant past," Attal said in a draft law to be submitted to parliament.

"Today's acts of hatred remind us that the fight is still ongoing."

Dreyfus, a 36-year-old army captain from the Alsace region of eastern France, was accused in October 1894 of passing secret information on new artillery equipment to the German military attache.

The accusation was based on a comparison of handwriting on a document found in the German's waste paper basket in Paris.

Dreyfus was put on trial, amid a virulent anti-Semitic press campaign.

Despite a lack of evidence, he was convicted of treason, sentenced to life imprisonment in the infamous Devil's Island penal colony in French Guiana and publicly stripped of his rank.

But Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, head of the intelligence services, reinvestigated the case in secret and discovered the handwriting on the incriminating message was that of another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.

When Picquart presented the evidence to the general staff of the French army, he himself was driven out of the military and jailed for a year, while Esterhazy was acquitted.

In June 1899, Dreyfus was brought back to France for a second trial. He was initially found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, before being officially pardoned -- though not cleared of the charges.

Only in 1906, after many twists, did the high court of appeal overturn the original verdict, exonerating Dreyfus.

He was reinstated with the rank of major. He served during World War I and died in 1935, aged 76.

Attal said that without the years in exile and his public humiliation, Dreyfus "would have risen to the highest ranks naturally".

No date has been set yet for a vote on the proposal.

France is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and the United States, as well as the largest Muslim community in the European Union.

There has been a rise in reported attacks against members of France's Jewish community since Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 and the Israeli military responded with a devastating military offensive on the Gaza Strip.

B.Carter--ThChM