Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

Akazu (Kinyarwanda, “Little House”). Euphemism given to the heart of the political
structure of the Rwandan ruling party, the Mouvement Révolutionnaire Nationale pour le
Développement (National Revolutionary Movement for Development), or MRND, from
1975 to 1994. The party was begun by Major General Juvenal Habyarimana (1937–1994)
as a means of centralizing radical Hutu ideologies across all of Rwanda and taking control
of the bureaucracy, the church, and the military—all within the structure of a one-party
state, with Habyarimana at its center as president. The major locus of power within this
structure was the so-called Akazu, an informal but tight-knit (and highly corrupt) network
of Habyarimana’s closest family members, friends, and party associates. It was said to
be so thoroughly dominated by Habyarimana’s wife Agathe (née Kazinga) that, at times,
even her husband was often frozen out of the decision-making process. (It was for this
essential reason that the Akazu was known in some circles as Le Clan de Madame, a direct
reference to the dominance she wielded over those in the circle.) The name Akazu was
originally, in precolonial times, a term given to the inner circle of courtiers to the royal
family; under the MRND regime, and particularly Agathe Habyarimana’s dominance, it
developed such awesome power that it even instituted its own death squad, recruited from
members of the Presidential Guard. The Akazu was, in reality, an oligarchy that not only
held back any possibility of Rwanda returning to democracy but also worked assiduously
to promote the interests of northern Rwanda (the Akazu base) over those of the south, to
further destabilize the position of the minority Tutsi throughout the country, and,
through its extensive network of supporters in the bureaucracy, the financial sector, and
society generally, to skim off vast amounts of public money for the sole good of the
extended Habyarimana family. The Akazu is the focus of most accusations concerning the
planning of the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi in 1994, with some even suggesting that
it was Akazu members who arranged for Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane to be shot down on
April 6, 1994—the spark that triggered the genocide that took place over the next hundred
days and resulted in the murder of between five hundred thousand and one million
Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Aktion(en) (German, operation[s]). Best understood as a term used predominantly by
the SS (Schutzstaffel or “Security Police”) and their allies to describe the nonmilitary
campaign of roundups and deportations of Jews and other “undesirables” in the eastern
territories under German occupation. The two most significant of these aktionen were
(1) Aktion Reinhard, after the assassination of RHSA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, “Reich
Security Main Office”) chief Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942, in Prague, Czechoslovakia,
whose purpose was to murder all the Jews in the five districts of the Generalgouvernement
(General Government) encompassing Krakow, Warsaw, Radom, Lublin, and
Galicia, and later expanded to include all Jews deported to occupied Poland; and
(2) Aktion 1005, which was developed in the summer of 1942 to obliterate all traces of
the Nazi Endlösung (Final Solution) by the use of slave laborers, including Jews who were
subsequently murdered, to both exhume and burn the bodies of the Nazis’ victims. Nearly
400 anti-Jewish aktionen took place between November 1939 and October 1944.
Aktion Reinhard (German, Operation Reinhard). Code name given to the Nazi
implementation of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” from 1942 onward. The
name was conferred on the operation as a memorial to the head of the Reich Security
Main Office and the Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942), who was assassinated by
Czech partisans in June 1942. At first, the plan was to inaugurate measures that would
AKTION REINHARD
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