{"id":345760,"date":"2025-08-15T05:40:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T05:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/345760\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T05:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T05:40:15","slug":"macron-admits-frances-guilt-over-cameroon-but-whats-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/345760\/","title":{"rendered":"Macron admits France\u2019s guilt over Cameroon. But what\u2019s next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

French media have reported that President Emmanuel Macron has officially acknowledged France\u2019s ignoble role in the brutal repression during Cameroon\u2019s struggle for independence. <\/strong><\/p>\n

In a letter to his Cameroonian counterpart, Paul Biya, Macron referred to the findings of a joint Franco-Cameroonian commission that examined France\u2019s involvement in events between 1945 and 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorians have made it clear that there was a war in Cameroon during which the colonial authorities and the French army used various forms of repressive violence in certain regions of the country. This war continued even after 1960, when France supported the actions of Cameroon\u2019s independent authorities,\u201d Macron wrote, adding that today he \u201cmust acknowledge France\u2019s role and responsibility in these events.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commission\u2019s report was published back in January, yet it took the French president eight months to make his position public. The report documents mass forced relocations, the internment of hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians in camps, and France\u2019s support for brutal militia groups aimed at crushing the Central African nation\u2019s aspirations for sovereignty.<\/p>\n

\"NewsFrench officials inspect latex collected by laborers in Cameroon in 1941. Source: The Forgotten Cameroon War<\/p>\n

After the First World War, the former German colony of Cameroon was divided between Britain and France. The country achieved independence only after a long and bloody civil war in which France actively intervened on the side of repressive authorities. Observers note that Macron is unlikely to have admitted guilt had he not feared further fueling France\u2019s already record-low popularity in Africa. Today, anti-French sentiment on the continent has reached unprecedented levels, particularly in Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Mali, Senegal, the Central African Republic, and several other countries. Paris is increasingly being told that African nations are strong enough to safeguard their territorial integrity on their own, while France is openly labeled an exploiter.<\/p>\n

In his efforts to appeal to African nations, Macron once again fell into the trap of his own rhetoric. In January, at the traditional meeting with French ambassadors, he sparked a major scandal by claiming that some Sahel countries owed their sovereignty solely to the French army. These words triggered a wave of outrage.<\/p>\n

The Chadian government lodged an official protest, demanding the complete withdrawal of French troops and calling Macron\u2019s remarks \u201cshameful.\u201d President Mahamat D\u00e9by stressed that the French leader had publicly shown disrespect toward Africa\u2019s sovereign states and insisted on the removal of French forces by the end of January. In November 2024, Chad terminated its defense agreement with Paris, and on January 31, 2025, not a single French soldier remained on its territory.<\/p>\n

Macron was reminded that it was not France that \u201csaved\u201d Africa, but rather the hundreds of thousands of Africans who fought in the Second World War and, at the cost of their own blood, defended France from the Nazis.<\/p>\n

Macron\u2019s admission over Cameroon\u2014just like his statement two years earlier on Algeria\u2014was driven not by remorse but by political calculation. The commission\u2019s final report runs over a thousand pages. It stresses that Cameroon\u2019s formal independence in January 1960 did not mark the end of colonial dependence. The country\u2019s first president established a repressive regime supported by Paris and the French military. During operations conducted under French command, four leaders of the independence movement were killed.<\/p>\n

\"NewsInvestigation into atrocities committed by France in Cameroon followed pressure from within the Central African country. Source: Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Paris acknowledged its role in decades of brutal suppression in Cameroon but offered no apology and made no mention of possible compensation. Similarly, in Algeria\u2019s case, Macron admitted France\u2019s responsibility for creating the conditions that led to genocide but refused to ask for forgiveness, claiming that doing so \u201cwould only make things worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, a simple admission of guilt is only the first, formal step. It must be sincere, backed by concrete actions, and accompanied by a willingness to address the consequences of the past. Otherwise, such statements are perceived as part of a diplomatic game aimed at securing a short-term media or international image boost. African nations, having reached political maturity, are no longer willing to settle for empty words and formal acknowledgments. They demand tangible action from former colonial powers\u2014from official apologies and reparations to the revision of neocolonial economic and military agreements that still constrain their sovereignty today. In this context, Macron\u2019s acknowledgment looks less like an act of courage and more like a belated reaction to France\u2019s rapidly declining influence in Africa, where entire regions are openly signaling their readiness to break definitively with Paris and seek new partners\u2014from Moscow and Beijing to Ankara and Tehran. And the longer France clings to its reluctance to take the next step beyond words, the faster Africa will close the door on it for good.<\/p>\n

Tural Heybatov<\/strong><\/p>\n

News.Az<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French media have reported that President Emmanuel Macron has officially acknowledged France\u2019s ignoble role in the brutal repression…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2740,2530,34,2000,299,36,122717],"class_list":{"0":"post-345760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-cameroon","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-french-repression"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115031181210874182","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}