Overview

• Emmanuel Macron’s letter publicly recognizes that France carried out “a war” against insurgent movements in Cameroon before and after its 1960 independence.
• He formally endorses the January report by a Franco-Cameroonian commission led by Karine Ramondy, which estimates tens of thousands of victims between 1956 and 1961.
• The president proposes a bilateral working group and commits to opening French archives to enable continued investigation of colonial-era repression.
• Macron highlights specific episodes of violence, including the Ekité operation in December 1956 and the deaths of four independence leaders under French command.
• He notes that gaps in French records and a 1980 Swiss non-lieu have so far prevented fresh findings on the 1960 assassination of Félix-Roland Moumié.