Emmanuel Macron officially recognized that France had led “A war” in Cameroon against insurrectional movements before and after the independence of 1960, marked by “Repressive violence”in a letter to his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya, made public on Tuesday August 12.
The French president thus endorses the conclusions of a report of historians who had been given to him in January and which has “Clearly highlights that a war had taken place in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army exercised repressive violence of a multiple nature”adding that “War continued beyond 1960 with the support of France to the actions carried out by the independent Cameroonian authorities”.
This report, of more than 1,000 pages, was submitted on January 28, in Yaoundé, to Paul Biya, a week after being presented to Mr. Macron, in Paris.
Using this word several times so far absent from the official French speech concerning Cameroon, Mr. Macron adds that “War continued beyond 1960 with the support of France to the actions carried out by the independent Cameroonian authorities”. “It is up to me to assume today the role and responsibility of France in these events”says the head of state, in this letter dated July 30.
The approach is in line with memory initiatives taken by the President of the Republic on the role of France during the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda or during the Algerian War, in the hope, now tenuous, to appease and then renew relations between the old colonial power and the African countries. And this, while the influence of Paris on the continent is subject to multiple opposite winds, in the Sahel in particular.
“Tens of thousands of deaths”
“As soon as the Second World War, France has been repressed politically, militarily, diplomatically, judicially, the independence movement, in particular activists of the Union of Cameroon populations [UPC]. Under the pretext of “pacification”, she organized the uprooting of the populations by moving them in groups of regrouping ”explained the historian Karine Ramondy, who led the research of a Franco-Cameroonian commission set up in 2022, in an interview with Monde Posted in February.
“War was also waged in court. Between 1955 and 1958, 2,000 people were sentenced, others arbitrarily imprisoned and torturedunderlined Karine Ramondy. The archives notably reveal targeted violence over women, some of which were pregnant. “By adding the various figures provided by the French military authority in the years when repression is the most intense, between 1956 and 1962, it is possible to estimate this official assessment at 7,500” fighters “killed, at least, by the French army”she added, adding that “This figure is very below realities and does not take into account civilians” or people “Who died[e]s of their injuries ”. “The most plausible assessment remains tens of thousands of deaths”she said.
