Por more than fifteen years (from 1955 to 1971), France waged a secret war in Cameroon. A colonial, then neocolonial war, which caused tens of thousands of deaths. A war totally erased from official histories. In France, where it is always taught that the decolonization of French Africa was exemplary and peaceful. In Cameroon, where it is still risky today to evoke this terrible conflict which gave birth to a formidable dictatorship. This book retraces, for the first time, the history of the war waged by the French authorities against the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC), the independence party created in 1948, and all those for whom freedom and justice are embodied in one word: "Kamerun".
For four years, the authors investigated in France and Cameroon. They found many witnesses: French and Cameroonian soldiers, nationalist fighters, survivors of the massacres.
In the archives, they consulted thousands of documents and made astonishing discoveries. They tell how the leaders of the UPC were assassinated, one by one: Ruben Um Nyobè in 1958, Félix Moumié in 1960, and Ernest Ouandié in 1971. And they show how the French administration and army, with their local executors, have carried out appalling repression for years: bombardments of populations, death squads, brainwashing, generalized torture, etc.
More than fifty years after the pseudo independence granted to Cameroon on January 1, 1960, this story remains extremely topical. Because, it is also that of the birth of Françafrique, fruit of the colonial consensus of the 4th Republic, then of the secret diplomacy of the 5th Republic. It is the story, finally, of a "friend of France" regime at perpetual war against its own people: After twenty-two years of dictatorship under Ahmadou Ahidjo and nearly three decades of decay under Paul Biya, the Cameroonians still dream of independence and democracy.
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