Cambodian woman cries as she recites Buddhist prayers remembering the victims of the Khmer Rouge. ANDY EAMES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The late Pol Pot escaped University of Mary Washington professor's three-decade-long effort to establish the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Tribunal. But now it could finally bring closure after decades after 1970s genocide.

Date published: 3/24/2007

By MICHAEL ZITZ

Twenty-seven years ago, upon hearing horrifying tales of genocide in Cambodia, Gregory H. Stanton made it his mission in life to bring the infamous Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders to justice.

Now, the University of Mary Washington professor has seen his years of effort rewarded with the recent establishment of a tribunal that is expected to put about 10 former leaders of the Communist regime on trial early next year.

The Khmer Rouge is believed to have killed about 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million citizens from 1975-79 before being driven out of power by a Vietnamese invasion.

Although the protracted effort to establish the tribunal allowed infamous leader Pol Pot to die in 1998 without being brought to justice, Stanton said he's not frustrated.

"There are so many Khmer Rouge leaders still alive--a number still in their 70s and quite capable of being put on trial," said Stanton, who spent two weeks in Cambodia earlier this month helping the tribunal navigate the difficult process of setting up rules.

In addition to being the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at UMW, Stanton is also the president and founder of the Washington-based group Genocide Watch. He is also director of the Cambodian Genocide Project and founder and chairman of the International Campaign to End Genocide.

The 60-year-old McLean resident has family connections to suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her husband, slavery abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton. His personal efforts on behalf of human rights began in the 1960s as a voting-rights worker in Mississippi.

Stanton served as Church World Service/CARE field director in Cambodia in 1980, where he heard the details of atrocities and saw mass graves firsthand.

The former law professor at Washington and Lee and American universities and the University of Swaziland was so determined to see the Khmer Rouge brought to justice he joined the U.S. State Department to push for a tribunal.

Early efforts to bring Khmer Rouge to justice bogged down in "Cold War" tensions between the United States and Soviet Union, he said. Until the Soviet Union dissolved, Stanton said, the U.S. State Department viewed going after the Khmer Rouge as indirect support of the communist government in Vietnam.

Date published: 3/24/2007