Cambodian Genocide Project

The Cambodian Genocide Project was founded by Gregory H. Stanton in 1982. Stanton started the project after directing the Church World Service and CARE relief program in Phnom Penh in 1980. Stanton proposed that the Khmer Rouge regime, which still held Cambodia's seat in the United Nations, should be charged in the International Court of Justice for violation of the Genocide Convention, to which Cambodia was a State-Party. 

Stanton undertook investigations in Cambodia with Dr. Ben Kiernan of Yale University in the 1980s. They interviewed many survivors, visited mass graves and extermination prisons, and collected hours of videotaped eye-witness testimony. Kiernan wrote several books about the history of the Khmer Rouge regime. Stanton wrote the legal analyses for an ICJ case, which could be filed by any State-Party to the Genocide Convention without reservations. 

After meeting with Stanton, the Foreign Minister of Australia, Bill Hayden, spoke in favor of his country taking the case to the ICJ. However, the Australian Prime Minister received a call from the US State Department urging him to overrule Hayden. Other countries were also approached, but any indicating interest were promptly asked not to file the case by the US State Department.

The Khmer Rouge were part of a coalition in Thailand and the Cambodian mountains that opposed the new Soviet and Vietnamese backed government in Phnom Penh that had overthrown the Khmer Rouge regime. The coalition also included the non-communist resistance and the Royalist party. The US opposed the new government because of its Soviet support. Stanton likened the tripartite coalition to an alliance between a collie, a poodle, and a wolf.

To reverse State Department opposition to trials for the Khmer Rouge, Dr. Stanton, Dr. Kiernan, Sally Benson, and Dr. Craig Etcheson co-founded the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge. They drafted the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act, introduced by Senator Charles Robb. It ordered the State Department to make it US policy to try the Khmer Rouge, to create a State Department Office of Cambodian Investigations, to conduct a study by legal scholars to recommend how trials should be conducted, and it earmarked $800,000 to fund the effort.

In 1992, Dr. Stanton left his law professorship at Washington and Lee University to join the State Department Foreign Service. He realized that in order for the trials to take place, a committed advocate had to join the State Department to promote the project. In 1994, President Clinton signed the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act. That same year, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda killed 800,000 Rwandans. 

The Director General of the Foreign Service, Genta Hawkins Holmes directed Dr. Stanton back to Washington, DC and assigned him to the Office of UN Political Affairs in the Bureau of International Organizations, with the mandate to deal with the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. Stanton joined the UN Commission of Inquiry on Rwanda and drafted UN Security Council Resolutions 955 and 978, which established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations was led by Ambassador Alphonse Laporta and included Dr. Stanton. The Office issued a Request for Proposals to document the Khmer Rouge genocide. Stanton recused himself from any decision making on the bidding. Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program, a successor to Stanton's Cambodian Genocide Project, won the contract. It was directed by Dr. Kiernan, Dr. Craig Etcheson, and Dr. Susan Cook. With Cambodian Youk Chang, the Cambodian Genocide Program established the Documentation Center for Cambodia (DCCam). 

Dr. Helen Jarvis and DCCam discovered tens of thousands of pages of detailed records collected by the Khmer Rouge that documented their crimes. DCCam also conducted a survey of mass graves, and hundreds of eyewitness testimonies.

This evidence was crucial to the cases against the Khmer Rouge leaders when a tribunal was created in 2006.

Thomas Hammarberg, UN Human Rights chief in the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia that followed the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, working with David Hawk, in 1997 persuaded the dual prime ministers of Cambodia to appeal to the UN to assist Cambodia in establishing a tribunal to try the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

Dr. Helen Jarvis became a senior advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Sok An. She established the Task Force to plan creation of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), commonly called the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Dr. Stanton worked with the Task Force and drafted the Internal Rule of Procedure for the Tribunal. The rules established the first active participation by victims in an international tribunal and provided for a Victims Support Unit that was led by Dr. Jarvis.

The UN and government of Cambodia signed the agreement to establish the ECCC in 2003. Judges and other personnel were appointed by the Cambodian government and the UN. Financing was pledged by UN members and the Tribunal was established in 2006.  

The tribunal tried and convicted three of the senior Khmer Rouge leaders, Kang Kek Iew (Duch) chief of the Tuol Sleng extermination prison in Phnom Penh, Nuon Chea (Brother Number Two) chief ideologist, and Khieu Samphan Head of State. Pol Pot, Brother Number One, died before trials began. Ieng Sary, Foreign Minister was tried but died before his verdict.

Although only a few Khmer Rouge leaders were tried, over 350,000 Cambodians attended the trials in person, and the trials were broadcast and received considerable publicity by radio and television. In polls of Cambodians taken by the International Republican Institute and the University of California at Berkeley over two thirds of those surveyed expressed their support for the ECCC and said the tribunal had contributed significantly to their understanding of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.