Ernest Ouandié

Ernest Ouandié (1924 – 15 January 1971) was a leader of the struggle for independence of Cameroon in the 1950s who continued to resist the government of President Ahmadou Ahidjo after Cameroon was granted a nominal independence by French president Charles de Gaulle and the French parliament on January 1, 1960.In August 1970, after a decade in an armed resistance dubbed "maquis," he surrendered at the gendarmerie station at Mbanga. He was tried on charges of "rebellion" and "seeking to overthrow a legal government using violence" and miscellaneous other charges, without counsel. (His French counsels, among them the future French president François Mitterand, had been denied entry into Cameroon by the government of Ahmadou Babatoura Ahidjo.) He was sentenced to death by the martial court tasked with the trial.

On January 15, 1971, before the appeal process had been exhausted, he was executed in Bafoussam on the main public square in front of about 40,000 local Cameroonian citizens. They had been summoned to attend the event, which the government had set as an exemplary punishment to instill state terror in the population that had fought French rule. The firing squad of Cameroonian soldiers was commanded by a French army officer who, after the legendary freedom fighter had already fallen, personally added the "coup de grace" gunshot to his head with a pistol. Wounded by several bullets but still conscious, Ouandié's last call to his people to continue his fight was: "History will tell; Let the fight be continued by others. Long live (God bless) Cameroon." As the Frenchman's bullet entered his head, he took his last breath.

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