Following the delivery of an exhaustive 1,035-page report, the French state has finally admitted what historians have long argued: it waged a war in Cameroon. President Emmanuel Macron, in a letter to his Cameroonian counterpart, acknowledged France’s responsibility for the violent repression of independence movements.
The report was the work of a joint Franco-Cameroonian commission announced in 2022. It meticulously documented the period from 1945 to 1971, establishing that French military forces committed various forms of violence across several regions. This support for repression continued even after 1960, backing the newly independent but authoritarian Cameroonian state.
The human cost of this unacknowledged war was immense, with tens of thousands of casualties and the targeted killing of nationalist leaders such as Ruben Um Nyobè. For decades, official French narratives largely ignored or downplayed these events, creating what many have called a “polished fiction” of its colonial endeavors.
Macron’s admission, however, did not come with an apology or a plan for reparations, drawing criticism that it is a half-measure. For those who have campaigned for this truth to be recognized, the acknowledgment is a victory, but they insist it must be the start of a deeper reckoning that includes memorialization, education, and justice for the victims.