France waged a “war” in Cameroon marked by “repressive violence” during and after the African country’s decolonisation in the late 1950s, President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged in a letter on Tuesday.
The letter, sent to his Cameroonian counterpart last month, is the latest example of France’s efforts under Macron to come to terms with its often-bloody colonial history.
The admission follows an official report, published in January, which said that France implemented mass forced displacement, pushed hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians into internment camps and supported brutal militias to quash the central African country’s push for sovereignty.
The historical commission examined France’s role in the years both leading up to and after Cameroon gained independence from France on January 1, 1960.
“The historians of the commission made it very clear that there was a war in Cameroon, during which the colonial authorities and the French army carried out repressive violence of several kinds… that continued after 1960,” Macron said in the letter to Cameroonian President Paul Biya, published by the French presidency.
“It is incumbent on me today to accept France’s role and responsibility in these events,” he said.
Macron announced the creation of the commission during a 2022 trip to the Cameroonian capital Yaounde.
Most of Cameroon came under French rule in 1918 after the defeat of its previous colonial ruler, Germany, during World War I.
But a brutal conflict unfolded when the country began pushing for its independence following World War II, a move France repressed violently, according to the report’s findings.
Between 1956 and 1961, France’s fight against Cameroonian independence claimed “tens of thousands of lives” and left hundreds of thousands displaced, the historians said.
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