“It is good, because it recognizes” what happened, reacted to AFP Mathieu Njassep, president of the association of veterans of Cameroon (Asvecam) which brings together independence veterans, ensuring however that it can only be satisfied if France pays repairs. A subject that is not addressed in his letter by Macron.
“France has committed a lot of crimes in Cameroon. It can pay repairs. It has destroyed villages, roads, so many things … There are a lot of things it has to do,” said the Cameroonian veteran.
The report of more than a thousand pages studies in particular the shift in the repression of the French colonial authorities to a real “war”. Taking place in the south and west of the country between 1956 and 1961, it undoubtedly made “tens of thousands of victims”, according to historians.
The report stresses that “formal independence (Cameroon in January 1960) is absolutely not a clear break with the colonial period”.
Macron, who suggests the creation of an ad hoc working group between Cameroon and France, “undertakes that the French archives are made easily accessible to allow the continuation of research work”.
He evokes “certain specific episodes of this war, such as that of Ekity of December 31, 1956, which made many victims, or death during military operations carried out under French command of the four independence leaders Isaac Nyobè Pandjock (June 17, 1958), Ruben Um Nyobè (September 13, 1958), Paul Momo (November 17, 1960) 1960) “.
On the other hand, concerning the assassination of opponent Félix-Roland Moumié in Geneva on November 3, 1960, “the absence of sufficient elements in the French archives and the dismissal rendered by the Swiss justice in 1980 did not seem to shed new light on the responsibilities” of his death, says the French president.