French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged the violence dedicated by his nation’s forces in Cameroon throughout and after the Central African nation’s wrestle for independence.
It adopted a joint report by Cameroonian and French historians analyzing France’s suppression of independence actions from 1945 to 1971.
In a letter to Cameroon’s President Paul Biya made public on Tuesday, Macron stated the report made clear “a conflict had taken place in Cameroon, throughout which the colonial authorities and the French military exercised repressive violence of a number of sorts in sure areas of the nation”.
“It’s as much as me at present to imagine the position and accountability of France in these occasions,” he stated.
Nevertheless, Macron fell in need of providing a transparent apology for the atrocities dedicated by French troops in its former colony, which gained independence in 1960.
The French chief cited 4 independence icons who have been killed throughout army operations led by French forces, together with Ruben Um Nyobe, the firebrand chief of the anti-colonialist UPC occasion.
France pushed tons of of hundreds of Cameroonians into internment camps and supported brutal militias to quash the independence wrestle, the AFP information company quotes the report as saying.
Tens of hundreds of individuals have been killed between 1956 and 1961, the historians’ report stated.
The choice to analyze and publish the findings on France’s position in Cameroon’s independence wrestle was made in 2022, throughout Macron’s go to to Yaoundé.
It adopted strain from inside the nation for France to acknowledge its atrocities in its former colony and pay reparations.
Macron additionally expressed willingness to work with Cameroon to advertise additional analysis on the matter, whereas highlighting the necessity for each international locations to make the findings out there to universities and scientific our bodies.
The BBC has reached out to Cameroon’s authorities for touch upon the French president’s admission.
Whereas Macron didn’t tackle requires reparations, it’s prone to be a key talking-point in Cameroon going ahead.
Beneath Macron, France has tried to confront its brutal colonial previous.
Final 12 months, it acknowledged for the primary time that its troopers had carried out a “bloodbath” in Senegal by which West African troops have been killed in 1944.
Macron has beforehand acknowledged France’s position within the Rwandan genocide, by which about 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and reasonable Hutus died, and sought forgiveness.
In 2021, he stated France had not heeded warnings of impending carnage and had for too lengthy “valued silence over examination of the reality”.
