Gregory H. Stanton is the former research professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. He is best known for his work in the area of genocide studies. He is the founder and president of Genocide Watch, [1] the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, [2] [3] and the Chair of the Alliance Against Genocide. From 2007 to 2009 he was the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Stanton comes from the lineage of women's suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Henry Brewster Stanton, a notable Abolitionist. He worked as a voting rights worker in Mississippi, a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ivory Coast, and as Church World Service/CARE Field Director in Cambodia in 1980. [4] [5]
Stanton was the research professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, until his retirement in 2019. [6] From 2003 to 2009 he was the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. [7] He has been a Law Professor at Washington and Lee University, American University, and the University of Swaziland. He has degrees from Oberlin College, Harvard Divinity School, Yale Law School, and a Doctorate in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2001–2002). [4]
Stanton was a law professor at Washington and Lee University from 1985 to 1991, was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Swaziland, and was a professor of Justice, Law, and Society at the American University. From 2003 to 2009, he was the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Stanton founded the Cambodian Genocide Project at Yale in 1981 and since then has been a driving force to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice.
Stanton was the Chair of the American Bar Association Young Lawyer's Division Committee on Human Rights and a member of the A.B.A.'s Standing Committee on World Order Under Law. Stanton was a legal advisor to Rukh, the Ukrainian independence movement (1988–1992), work for which he was named the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America's 1992 Man of the Year.
Stanton served in the State Department (1992–1999). At the State Department he drafted the United Nations Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central African Arms Flow Commission. He also drafted the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations resolutions that helped bring about an end to the Mozambican civil war. In 1994, Stanton won the American Foreign Service Association's W. Averell Harriman Award [8] for "extraordinary contributions to the practice of diplomacy exemplifying intellectual courage," based on his dissent from U.S. policy on the Rwandan genocide. [9]
Stanton wrote the State Department options paper on ways to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia. Stanton was deeply involved in the U.N.-Cambodian government negotiations that brought about the creation of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, for which he drafted internal rules of procedure.
Stanton is best known for his authorship of The Ten Stages of Genocide, a model of the genocidal process that the US State Department and UN have used in predicting and taking steps to prevent genocide. His Ten Stage model is used in courses on genocide in schools and colleges around the world.
In 1999 Stanton founded Genocide Watch. [10] From 1999 to 2000, he also served as co-chair of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court.
In 2004, Stanton published a proposal to establish an Office for Genocide Prevention at the UN. [11] With other members of the International Campaign to End Genocide, he met with UN officials to lobby for the proposal. In 2004 in Stockholm, Secretary General Kofi Annan announced the creation of the Office of the UN Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide. [12]
In 2007, Stanton was elected President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, to serve until 2009. [13] He served as First Vice President of the Association from 2005 to 2007. In 2013, the organization gave Stanton its Distinguished Service Award and made him a Life Member. [14]
In 1989, after leading a genocide prevention training program for officials from Rwanda and surrounding countries, Stanton met with President Juvénal Habyarimana to ask him to remove ethnic identities from the Rwandan national identification cards because the ID cards could be used to identify people to be killed in a genocide. He advised President Habyarimana that if action were not taken to prevent it, Rwanda would have a genocide within five years. [15]
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of Paul Kagame supported by Uganda, Belgium, The United Kingdom, Canada and The United States of America invaded Rwanda in October 1990 and started massacring Rwandan Hutu civilians. [16]
On 6 April 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi were assassinated in a terrorist attack that downed the presidential airplane, hence causing the Rwandan genocide in 1994, in which Rwandan Tutsis estimated at 500,000 were killed and Rwandan Hutus estimated at 300,000 were massacred. [17]
The RPF continued to massacre Rwandan Hutus after 1994. In April 1995, the RPF perpetrated the Kibeho massacre by murdering more than 8,000 Rwandan Hutus sheltered in Kibeho IDP Camp. [18]
In October 1996, the Rwanda's RPF, Uganda and Burundi started a campaign to invade the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), then Zaire, with the aim to plunder natural resources. [19]
The UN's DRC Mapping Exercise Report details how during that invasion of the DRC, the RPF committed crimes of genocide against Rwandan Hutu refugees, Burundian Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus, whereby an estimated number of 250,000 of Rwandan Hutu Refugees were massacred by the RPF. [20]
In 2010, Stanton demanded that Robert Mugabe be prosecuted for the crime of genocide. He proposed a "Mixed UN-Zimbabwean Criminal Tribunal" inspired by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, adding, "Mugabe's reign of terror must end." [21]
In 2012, Stanton called for the United States to release "all diplomatic and intelligence cables relating to the Gukurahundi massacres" of Zimbabwe and to explain the U.S. decision "to remain silent", in order to "clear its conscience". [22]
Stanton has accused Iran – particularly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – of incitement to genocide, explaining that the constant calls by the Iranian regime to destroy Israel directly advocate genocide. [23] [24] Stanton referenced speeches by Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of Israel and advocating that Israeli Jews should be transferred to Germany and Austria. He described the proposal as incitement to genocide and advocacy of forced population transfer. [25] Stanton wrote:
Iran is the only country since Nazi Germany that has openly expressed its genocidal intent to wipe another nation off the map while pursuing a program to develop nuclear weapons. Few believed that Hitler was serious about his genocidal intentions until Nazis carried out the Holocaust. The Iranian President denies that the Holocaust even happened.
Stanton congratulated Angela Merkel for opposing Iran's nuclear program, and also praised Canada's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for recalling the Canadian Ambassador to Iran.
Stanton has condemned Iran's nuclear program, adding that NATO should protect Israel to safeguard the country from a possible nuclear missile strike. [24] [25]
In an article for the Mail and Guardian, Stanton acknowledged the Isaaq genocide that occurred in the Democratic Republic of Somalia under Siad Barre. He advocated for the recognition of Somaliland as a separate state from Somalia, arguing it could "help stave off conflict in a region that has suffered terribly." [26]
In 1999 Stanton founded Genocide Watch, [10] a non-governmental organization campaigning against genocide based in Washington, D.C. [27] [28] Genocide Watch is the chair and coordinator of the Alliance Against Genocide, which includes 100 organizations in 24 countries, including the Minority Rights Group, the International Crisis Group, the Aegis Trust, and Survival International. [29] Its board of advisers includes former commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda Roméo Dallaire, former Nuremberg Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz, former US Ambassador to the United Nations and current Administer of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Samantha Power, [30] [31] and former UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng.
In 2010, Genocide Watch was the first [32] organization to assert that the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres in Zimbabwe met the definition of genocide, calling for the prosecution of Zimbabwean leaders including president Robert Mugabe. [33] [34] [35] Genocide Watch has also indicated numerous times that the Armenians are at risk of genocide due to Azerbaijan's unprovoked assault on Armenia (2022) and its blockade and offensive of Artsakh (2022–2023). [36] [37]
Stanton has formed alliances with dozens of human rights leaders, such as Baroness Kennedy and Ewelina Ochab from the Coalition for Genocide Response. [38] In 2020, Genocide Watch joined other human rights groups urging the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to investigate the actions of the Chinese government regarding Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, and "develop strategies" to end violations that would amount to acts of genocide. [39] In the case of Bosco Ntaganda within the International Criminal Court investigation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Genocide Watch submitted amicus curiae observations [40] along with the Antiquities Coalition and Blue Shield International, on the interpretation of attacks on cultural property in the Rome Statute. [41]
Stanton has criticized the term "ethnic cleansing", calling it a term invented by Slobodan Milošević as a term used for the denial and cover-up of genocide, stating it whitewashes the crimes and impedes forceful action to stop genocide. [42]
Human occupation of Rwanda is thought to have begun shortly after the last ice age. By the 11th century, the inhabitants had organized into a number of kingdoms. In the 19th century, Mwami (king) Rwabugiri of the Kingdom of Rwanda conducted a decades-long process of military conquest and administrative consolidation that resulted in the kingdom coming to control most of what is now Rwanda. The colonial powers, Germany and Belgium, allied with the Rwandan court. roughly in the 12th century a Germany man named Joel Frederick made the borders for Rwanda but were changed when Rwanda claimed its Independence “Rwanda.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation in 1962.
Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan politician and military officer who was the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until his assassination in 1994. He was nicknamed Kinani, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible".
Paul Kagame is a Rwandan politician and former military officer who has been the President of Rwanda since 2000. He was previously a commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel armed force which invaded Rwanda in 1990. The RPF was one of the parties of the conflict during the Rwandan Civil War and the armed force which ended the Rwandan genocide. He was considered Rwanda's de facto leader when he was Vice President and Minister of Defence under President Pasteur Bizimungu from 1994 to 2000 after which the vice-presidential post was abolished.
Roméo Antonius Dallaire is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire is a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.
The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occurred from 7 April to 19 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. Over a span of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were systematically killed by Hutu militias. While the Rwandan Constitution states that over 1 million people were killed, most scholarly estimates suggest between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died. The genocide was marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbors, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 women raped.
Agathe Uwilingiyimana, sometimes known as Madame Agathe, was a Rwandan political figure. She served as Prime Minister of Rwanda from 18 July 1993 until her assassination on 7 April 1994, during the opening stages of the Rwandan genocide. She was also Rwanda's acting head of state in the hours leading up to her death.
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), nicknamed "Radio Genocide" or "Hutu Power Radio", was a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993, to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the Rwandan genocide that took place from April to July 1994, and has been described by some scholars as having been a de facto arm of the Hutu government.
The failure of the international community to effectively respond to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been the subject of significant criticism. During a period of around 100 days, between 7 April and 15 July, an estimated 500,000-1,100,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutu, were murdered by Interahamwe militias.
The Rwandan Civil War was a large-scale civil war in Rwanda which was fought between the Rwandan Armed Forces, representing the country's government, and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from 1 October 1990 to 18 July 1994. The war arose from the long-running dispute between the Hutu and Tutsi groups within the Rwandan population. A 1959–1962 revolution had replaced the Tutsi monarchy with a Hutu-led republic, forcing more than 336,000 Tutsi to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. A group of these refugees in Uganda founded the RPF which, under the leadership of Fred Rwigyema and Paul Kagame, became a battle-ready army by the late 1980s.
The Kibeho massacre occurred in a camp for internally displaced persons near Kibeho, in south-west Rwanda on 22 April 1995. Australian soldiers serving as part of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda estimated at least 4,000 people in the camp were killed by soldiers of the military wing of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, known as the Rwandan Patriotic Army. The Rwandan Government estimated the death toll to be 338.
The Akazu was an informal organization of Hutu extremists whose members contributed strongly to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A circle of relatives and close friends of Rwanda's then-president Juvénal Habyarimana and his influential wife Agathe Habyarimana, they were also called the Zero Network, for their goal of a Rwanda with zero Tutsi.
Protais Mpiranya, also known as Sambao Ndume, was a Rwandan military officer and war criminal who was internationally wanted for his alleged role in the Rwandan genocide. Regarded as Rwanda's most wanted fugitive, he was described in 2022 as "one of the world’s most brutal killers", and was internationally recognised as the most sought génocidaire.
Kangura was a Kinyarwanda and French-language magazine in Rwanda that served to stoke ethnic hatred in the run-up to the Rwandan genocide. The magazine was established in 1990, following the invasion of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and continued publishing up to the genocide. Edited by Hassan Ngeze, the magazine was a response to the RPF-sponsored Kanguka, adopting a similar informal style. "Kangura" was a Rwandan word meaning "wake others up", as opposed to "Kanguka", which meant "wake up". The journal was based in Gisenyi.
Human rights in Rwanda have been violated on a grand scale. The greatest violation is the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi in 1994. The post-genocide government is also responsible for grave violations of human rights.
Seth Sendashonga was the Minister of the Interior in the government of national unity in Rwanda, following the military victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) after the 1994 genocide. One of the politically moderate Hutus in the National Unity Cabinet, he became increasingly disenchanted with the RPF and was eventually forced from office in 1995 after criticizing government policies. After surviving a 1996 assassination attempt while in exile in Kenya, he launched a new opposition movement, the Forces de Résistance pour la Démocratie (FRD). Sendashonga was killed by unidentified gunmen in May 1998. The Rwandan government is widely believed to be responsible for the assassination.
Rwandan genocide denial is the pseudohistorical assertion that the Rwandan genocide did not occur, specifically rejection of the scholarly consensus that Rwandan Tutsis were the victims of genocide between 7 April and 19 July 1994. The perpetrators, a small minority of other Hutu, and a fringe of Western writers dispute that reality.
The role of France in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has been a source of controversy and debate both within and beyond France and Rwanda. France actively supported the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana against the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, which since 1990 had been engaged in a conflict intended to restore the rights of Rwandan Tutsis both within Rwanda and exiled in neighboring countries following over four decades of anti-Tutsi violence. France provided arms and military training to Habyarimana's militias, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, which were among the government's primary means of operationalizing the genocide following the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994.
The International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990 was an international inquiry that investigated reported human rights abuses during the Rwandan Civil War. Sponsored by four international non-governmental organizations, the commission was not officially mandated by the Rwandan government. Ten commissioners from eight countries spent two weeks in Rwanda visiting prefectures and documenting oral and written accounts, along with exhuming reported locations of mass grave burials. Primarily, the inquiry examined three major massacres that occurred between 1990 and 1992. The commission lasted three months and the final report was released in March 1993. Due to the dates of its investigation, the commission does not cover the Rwandan genocide, which followed in April 1994.
During the First Congo War, Rwandan, Congolese, and Burundian Hutu men, women, and children in villages and refugee camps were hunted down and became victims of mass killings in eastern Zaire.
In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front is a 2018 non-fiction book by Canadian journalist Judi Rever and published by Random House of Canada; it has also been translated into Dutch and French. The book describes alleged war crimes by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), Rwanda's ruling political party, during its ascent to power in the 1990s.
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The silent genocide has become overt...Genocide Watch considers Azerbaijan to be at Stage 4: Dehumanization, Stage 5: Organization, Stage 7: Preparation, Stage 8: Persecution, and Stage 9: Extermination.
Genocide Watch is issuing a Genocide Warning due to Azerbaijan's unprovoked military attacks on Armenia and on the unrecognized Armenian Republic of Artsakh.