Obituary: Dennis Brutus, Supporter of Reparations to Armenians

January 7, 2010 Henry Theriault Obituaries, News 2

Dennis Brutus was a world-renowned human rights activist who had a major role in the struggle against apartheid in his native South Africa and later in various struggles for life and justice around the globe. He passed away on Dec. 26, 2009 in Cape Town.

Dennis Brutus (1924-2009)

Brutus was instrumental in organizing the 1999 protests of the WTO in Seattle, was a major figure in the World Social Forum seeking an alternative global political and economic order, and was a leader of the emerging global reparations movement for apartheid, slavery, mass rape, genocide, corporate abuse, and environmental damage.

He was the co-chair of the committee that organized the 2005 Global Reparations Symposium at Worcester State College, which featured discussions of reparations for South African apartheid, U.S. slavery and Jim Crow, the comfort women system by Japan, the Native American Genocides and dispossessions, and the Armenian Genocide.

He became a supporter of the Armenian right to reparations and invited panelists to submit their symposium papers for a forthcoming issue of the Armenian Review on reparations.

Henry Theriault

Henry Theriault

Henry C. Theriault, Ph.D. is currently associate vice president for Academic Affairs at Worcester State University in the US, after teaching in its philosophy department from 1998 to 2017. From 1999 to 2007, he coordinated the University’s Center for the Study of Human Rights. Theriault’s research focuses on genocide denial, genocide prevention, post-genocide victim-perpetrator relations, reparations and mass violence against women and girls. He has lectured and appeared on panels around the world. Since 2007, he has chaired the Armenian Genocide Reparations Study Group and is lead author of its March 2015 final report, Resolution with Justice. He has published numerous journal articles and chapters, and his work has appeared in English, Spanish, Armenian, Turkish, Russian, French and Polish. With Samuel Totten, he co-authored The United Nations Genocide Convention: An Introduction (University of Toronto Press, 2019). Theriault served two terms as president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), 2017-2019 and 2019-2021. He is founding co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Genocide Studies International. From 2007 to 2012 he served as co-editor of the International Association of Genocide Scholars’ peer-reviewed Genocide Studies and Prevention.

2 Comments

  2. I wish I had the pleasure of meeting or even hearing a dissertation by Dr. Brutus. Is their an online transcript of the conference summary from Worcester State mentioned above? As a supporter of reparations for Armenians, I would like to learn more about him, his thoughts about reparations and read more about this topic re the Armenian case.
    Kind regards.

    Reply

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