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Anwar: "The Will of Man Is Stronger Than Iron Bars"
"If I shall be condemn'd/Upon surmises, all proofs sleeping else/But what your jealousies awake, I tell you/'Tis rigor and not law."
--The Winter's Tale
Like Hermione of Shakespearean fame, I was tried on trumped-up charges. Behind the mask of the law, apparatus of state were deployed to fabricate evidence. Individuals were bribed and coerced to bear false witness.
Hermione had recourse to Apollo's oracle, but we are too far removed from Delphos in time and religious context. In any case, truth had no meaning in my trial. So what good would spiritual counsel have done? Even if Apollo himself were to speak for my innocence, our judge would have declared him irrelevant. Thus, while Hermione's accuser must blush in shame, my accusers are now filled with shameless glee.
I was tried in a court which, from the very beginning, had its scales of justice tilted to favor my persecutor. There was no trial, only the commitment to punish me.
Still I believe the dedicated and spirited efforts of my counsel have not been futile. Seven months of heroism have not been a waste. I knew that the show would proceed to its predictable end, with injustice finally handed down. But in the process, the prosecution case was exposed as a sham and the conspiracy became the object of scorn and ridicule. As I said in the courtroom after the verdict was announced, the judgment stinks to high heaven, and the sentence shows, to a degree greater than even I had imagined, that the ruling clique indeed has nothing but utter contempt for justice and even common sense.
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