John Prendergast Quotes
The biggest road block to action on genocide and other human rights crimes is ignorance. Most people just don't know that such things are happening, and often, if they have a vague idea they are happening, there is a feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop these crimes.
Prendergast, John, and Don Cheadle. Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond. Hyperion, 2007, p. 7.
This statement was made before the 2012 Syrian Revolution.
Many cultures and nations, even after a century will not admit to the human rights violations that previous governments might have committed. Most dramatic is the Turkish government's not even allowing studies or discussions about the organized government mass murders of citizens of Armenian extraction—–the so called "Armenian Genocide ", but even in his native Poland there was and has been little admission of those Poles who collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis in the murder of millions of polish citizens and stole the residences, farms and other properties of Jews and other Poles who the Germans sent to concentration camps and even for the few who survived threatened them with death when they returned to reclaim their own property. Most modern societies have great difficulty coming to grips with police brutality and often denying that it is an endemic problem as opposed to one or two "bad apples".
The speech is traditionally written by the government.
The Iran President seemed to be irrational at times. He was also very hostile to democracies—none of which were acceptable to him. But he was the only leader of a member nation of the UN who ever called for the extermination of another UN member state. He called for the State of Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
The Armenians were victims of ethnic cleansing where some were chased out and others killed.
Hissine Habre was the President and Dictator of Chad. He was one of the worst war criminal and murderer in the world. He and the other DDS policemen and agents were trained by the United States.
1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon. He was advocating British entry into WWI in defense of the Neutrality of Belgium as was their treaty obligation.
John Prendergast is an American human rights and anti-corruption activist, author, and former Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. He is the Founding Director of the Enough Project, a nonprofit human rights organization, and co-founder with George Clooney of The Sentry.
