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“Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours...then surely it is a braver, a saner and truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men.”
― Roger Casement, 1916
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Roger Casement was an Irish-born poet, human rights pioneer, & martyr. In the 1890s, his revealing work as a diplomat exposed colonial atrocities against the indigenous peoples of the Congo. And he went on to uncover human rights abuses in Peru.

These actions & experiences transformed the now world-famous diplomat, into a champion for Self-Determination and independence for all oppressed peoples.

In turn, Casement began to focus his efforts on helping lead his own, the people of Ireland, in their fight for independence.

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“Ireland that has wronged no man, that has injured no land, that has sought no dominion over others. Ireland is treated today among other nations of the world as if she was a convicted criminal. If it be treason to fight against such an unnatural fate as this, then I am proud to be a rebel and shall cling to my rebellion with the last drop of my blood.”
- Roger Casement, 1917
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After the Easter Rising, a failed rebellion against the British in April of 1916, Casement was stripped of his honors & charged with high treason.

While at first, he had the support of his people, (and many people, from many nations, around the world) the British government soon circulated copies of his journals, known as the Black Diaries, which revealed Casement’s life as a gay man.

Given views of homosexuality at the time, Casement lost all support and was executed the same year.

It was not until 1965 that Casement’s remains were returned to Ireland and, after a state funeral, reinterred in Dublin.

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at Dún Laoghaire, Ireland
by Mark Richards

Roger Casement

By William Butler Yeats

I say that Roger Casement
Did what he had to do.
He died upon the gallows,
But that is nothing new.

Afraid they might be beaten
Before the bench of Time,
They turned a trick by forgery
And blackened his good name.

A perjurer stood ready
To prove their forgery true;
They gave it out to all the world,
And that is something new;

For Spring Rice had to whisper it,
Being their Ambassador,
And then the speakers got it
And writers by the score.

Come Tom and Dick, come all the troop
That cried it far and wide,
Come from the forger and his desk,
Desert the perjurer’s side;

Come speak your bit in public
That some amends be made
To this most gallant gentleman
That is in quicklime laid.

ROGER CASEMENT

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