On August 12, French President Emmanuel Macron took a historic yet cautious step by acknowledging, in a letter to Cameroonian President Paul Biya, that France had waged a full-scale war against the Camerooninan independence movement, using methods of extreme brutality. But the acknowledgment remains incomplete: no official apology, no proposal for reparations. Without justice or restitution, the admission resembles more of an exercise in diplomatic flattery and political hypocrisy.

A joint Franco-Cameroonian commission, created during Macron’s 2022 visit to Yaounde and co-chaired by historian Karine Ramondy and artist Blick Bassy, delivered in January 2025 a report of over 1,000 pages. Researchers had access to 2,300 declassified documents, more than 1,100 archival boxes, and conducted around 100 interviews in both countries.

The report confirms that between 1945 and 1971, France carried out a campaign of extreme repression against the UPC (The Union of the Peoples of Cameroon), a party that led the liberation movement: forced displacements, mass internment, and support for brutal militias to neutralize its leaders, including Ruben Um Nyobe and Felix-Roland Moumie, who was assassinated by poisoning by French intelligence in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1960.

Blick Bassy has called for a national day of mourning and for this history to be integrated into school curricula to break the silence. Many Cameroonian historians have also urged for the return of colonial archives currently held in France, which they say are essential for........

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