Gregory Stanton

Gregory H. Stanton (* 1947 ) is Professor of Comparative Genocide Research and genocide - Prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax (Virginia) ( United States ).

Family background and education

Stanton is a descendant of the suffragettes associated suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton . His father Howard Stanton was a pastor of the Presbyterians , who from 1942 campaigned against the racial segregation of African Americans and later against the persecution of dissenters under Joseph McCarthy . His mother, Alison Stanton, was an English teacher.

As a high school student, Gregory Stanton experienced a personal conversion to Christianity, which he understands as the practical following of Jesus . He worked with friends as a voting rights activist in Leake County , Mississippi , in 1966 and witnessed an attack on their whereabouts by the local Ku Klux Klan . After college, he volunteered in the Peace Corps , studying theology at Harvard Divinity School with the goal of social service, then cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago . There he achieved a doctorate (Ph.D.). Then he wanted to get involved against genocide and enrolled in the Yale Law School . From the second year of studies (1980) he studied the genocide in Cambodia .

Cambodia

In 1980 the Church World Service (CWS) of the National Council of Churches of the USA asked Stanton to head an association of groups (CWS, CARE International , Lutheran World Relief) that wanted to provide direct aid to genocide victims in Phnom Penh . He should coordinate aid and develop a long-term rehabilitation program for nutrition and primary education.

In preparation for his service in Cambodia, Stanton read testimonies from people who had survived the genocide of the Khmer Rouge by fleeing in time, for example in Murder of a Gentle Land by John Barron and Anthony Paul and Cambodia Year Zero by Francois Ponchaud. Since Cambodia had signed the Genocide Convention and the Khmer Rouge formally ruled the country, but no longer controlled it politically, Stanton saw the opportunity to bring those responsible for this genocide to justice and bring them to justice. He found approval from his teachers at Yale (Myres McDougall, Michael Reisman, Burke Marshall, Ben Kiernan). From June 1980 he also won David Hawk , the former head of Amnesty International in the USA, and through him other human rights groups for the plan.

Since then, Stanton and Ben Kiernan have been collecting evidence of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. They were among the first Western Witnesses to visit freshly opened mass graves at Choeung Ek . They collected testimony from survivors and found that virtually every Cambodian family had lost members in the mass murders, but that some minorities were destined to be exterminated. They also witnessed the consequences of US bombing and landmines by the Khmer Rouge on Cambodia's people.

After his return to the USA in 1981 and a severe depression due to his impressions, Stanton founded the Cambodian Genocide Project to enforce the international prosecution of the Khmer Rouge for the genocide in Cambodia. He asked the International Commission of Jurists , headquartered in Geneva , to document the crimes and find a state to prosecute before the International Court of Human Rights. The commission hesitated because the US State Department denied the charges and questioned whether the crimes of the Khmer Rouge should be defined as genocide. At the instigation of Josef Stalin , ideologically and politically motivated mass murder was excluded from the UN definition of genocide in 1948. Stanton thought the current definition was sufficient because the Khmer Rouge had chosen religious and ethnic minorities (Muslim Cham, Buddhist monks, Christians and others) to exterminate them in part. In the spring of 1982 he traveled to Phnom Penh again with David Hawk and, with the permission of the authorities there, gathered evidence of the genocide.

In 1986, Stanton found out that the Khmer Rouge had forced the residents of the eastern border region with Vietnam to wear a blue and white headscarf when they were deported to labor camps in 1977/78. According to all the witnesses interviewed, the cloth served as a sign of later murdering the wearer. The clothing feature had been prescribed by central order at Pnom Penh and then had to be worn in public at all times. It was therefore an equivalent of the Star of David for Stanton . He had the testimony documented on tape and film, but could not find enough donors for the production of the documentary.

From 1986 Stanton tried to win the Australian government as prosecutor of the case. After initial sympathy, the government declined on the pretext that they did not want to recognize the Khmer Rouge as a state government through the indictment. Stanton attributed this to the influence of the US State Department, which supported an opposition coalition in Cambodia including the Khmer Rouge. He and David Hawk could not find a government to indict the case. He then tried to win the United States Congress with a group of Cambodian activists for the case. From 1990 Stanton, Ben Kiernan and Hawk led a campaign in the USA against the return of the Khmer Rouge to power ( Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge , CORKR). They passed a law that forced the US State Department to investigate the genocide in Cambodia in 1994, to support an international tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators, and to provide around $ 900,000 for it. Stanton chaired the organizing committee for the investigation and co-founded a documentation center in Phnom Penh. He published the article Options to Try Pol Pot to enforce his arrest. By 2001 he achieved that the US government supported the international tribunal and won the United Nations Security Council for it.

Genocide prevention

At the invitation of his friends, social scientists and lawyers Leo and Hilda Kuper, Stanton became Vice President of the London organization International Alert Against Genocide , which, however, was largely limited to conferences without consequences. From 1989 onwards, Leo Kuper and Stanton tried in vain to induce Human Rights Watch to set up a division called Genocide Watch . In 1998, Stanton himself founded this initiative with the aim of enabling early detection of developments in new genocides, early warning and political action to prevent them, and to create an international campaign to end genocides. In 1999, Stanton founded the Alliance Against Genocide , which he chairs.

Teaching assignments

From 1985 to 1991, Stanton was Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University and the University of Swaziland, and Professor of Justice, Law and Society at American University . In 2001/02, Stanton was a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars . From 2003 to 2009 he was Professor of Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia .

From 2007 to 2009 he was President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars . Today he is Professor of Genocide Studies and Genocide Prevention at George Mason University.

Offense

In January 1998, Stanton was wanted by the police after a violent incident in a video store. After the employee of the video store asked for a late return fee for videos, a dispute arose. Stanton hit the clerk with a videotape and escaped into his car. When the employee followed him, Stanton drove his car up to him and hit him with the car, so that the employee was thrown through the window of an adjacent restaurant. The employee suffered injuries, including a. a broken bone. Stanton, at the time still an employee of the State Department, fled to Amsterdam with a diplomatic passport to avoid prosecution, but was arrested at the airport a week later on his return to the USA. He was then charged with assault, property damage and theft. Stanton's defense attorneys cited your client's mental instability. The State Department put Stanton on leave and eventually fired him.

literature

• Samuel Totten, Steven Leonard Jacobs (eds.): Pioneers of Genocide Studies. Transaction, 2013, pp. 387-398

Web links

Short biographies

• Genocidewatch.net
• Cultural diplomay.org
• University of Mary Washington (2011)

Publications

• Gregory Stanton: The Ten Stages of Genocide

Organizations

• Genocide Watch

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Gregory Stanton: The Call. In: Samuel Totten & Steven L. Jacobs: Pioneers in Genocide Studies. Transaction Publishers, 2002
2. ↑ "A Quest for Justice" , Washington and Lee Alumni Magazine , September-October 1987th
3. ^ "His Brother's Keeper" , Student Lawyer ( American Bar Association ), Vol. 11, No. 6, February 1983, pp. 23-34.
4. ^ Stanton Leaves After Six Years As Professor of Human Rights. ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. UMW News, April 9, 2009 
5. ↑ Biography ( Memento of the original dated February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , George Mason University. 
6. ↑ SUSPECT IN VIDEO STORE ATTACK CALLED FROM NY, WIFE SAYS . In: Washington Post . January 28, 1998, ISSN  0190-8286 ( washingtonpost.com [accessed September 4, 2019]).
7. ↑ Dan Eggen: MAN ACCUSED OF assaulting VIDEO STORE OWNER IS ARRESTED. In: Washington Post. February 1, 1998, accessed August 31, 2019 .