In a letter sent last month to his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya, French President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that France waged a "war" in Cameroon during and even after its decolonisation in the late 1950s, and which involved "repressive violence", reports FRANCE 24.
The admission follows a French government report detailing mass displacement and brutal crackdowns during Cameroon’s push for independence.
The letter follows an officially commissioned report, published in January, which said that France implemented mass forced displacement, pushed hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians into internment camps and supported brutal militias to quash the central African country's push for sovereignty.
The historical commission, the creation of which had been announced by Macron during a 2022 trip to Yaounde, examined France's role leading up to when Cameroon gained independence from France on January 1, 1960, but also during the subsequent years.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.