French president admits to France's repressive war during Cameroon's independence struggle

French president Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that France had led a war in Cameroon during the country’s independence struggle in a document made public on Tuesday. 

Macron wrote to Cameroon president Paul Biya on 30 July to take responsibility for actions of repressive violence against insurgent movements in Cameroon. 

He said this violence took place before and after the country’s independence in 1960. 

This is the first time that France officially uses the word “war” to describe its actions in Cameroon over that period of time.  

The French president’s statement draws from the conclusions of a report made by historians, and presented to both countries in January. 

The report found that French troops “probably killed tens of thousands of Cameroonians” between 1945 and 1971. 

Emmanuel Macron especially admitted to France’s killings of independentist leaders from the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon, including the murder of Ruben Um Nyobè in 1958. 

The French president also acknowledged colonial forces' perpetration of the Ekité massacre, in which they killed at least dozens of people on 31 December 1956.

Throughout his presidency, Emmanuel Macron has undertaken a form of reckoning regarding France's colonial past, acknowledging the country's role in the 1944 Thiaroye massacre, in the 1994 Rwanda genocide and in the Algerian war of independence.