Photos : Man Arrested For Trying to Erase All of Cameroon’s Colonial Markers in Douala

Andre Blaise Essama has put himself on a mission to remove all remnants of France’s colonial presence in his country by removing statues of French glory and replacing them with national heroes.

Andre Blaise Essama has put himself on a mission to remove all remnants of France’s colonial presence in his country by removing statues of French glory and replacing them with national heroes.

Essama launched this campaign in 2015 with the beheading of the statue of General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, a French colonial hero. The statue was erected in Douala in the colonial period. He added to this by pulling down a status of an unknown French soldier.

For these acts, he was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison for destruction of public property.

Photos: Man Arrested For Trying to Erase All of Cameroon’s Colonial Markers in Douala

In 2016, Andre again beheaded the repaired statue of the French general, and this fetched him another six months in jail after he refused an offer to pay for its repair instead of a jail term.

This earned Andre large supporters who praised his action.

A statue for a deserving ‘National Hero’
Andrea erected a statue of John Ngu Foncha – a pivotal figure in the unification of the British and French Cameroons, but was pulled down by local authorities. Foncha’s statue was replaced with an effigy of French videographer, Sylvie Blocher.

Source - Cameroon Intelligence