Overview

• Macron’s letter to President Paul Biya, made public this month, accepts that France waged a “war” in Cameroon marked by mass forced displacement and internment camps.
• The acknowledgment follows a Franco-Cameroonian commission report that documented tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands displaced between 1945 and 1971.
• It acknowledges France’s responsibility for the deaths of independence leaders Ruben Um Nyobè, Paul Momo, Isaac Nyobè Pandjock and Jérémie Ndéléné without offering any apology or compensation.
• Macron pledged to open French archives and create a bilateral working group to implement the commission’s recommendations and facilitate ongoing research.
• Reactions in Cameroon range from cautious approval by veterans to demands for reparations, mass grave identification and a national mourning ceremony as President Paul Biya pursues an eighth term.