Description
On November 3rd, 1960, Félix Moumié, the famous independence fighter of Cameroon, also called Cameroon’s Lumumba, died in Geneva. An agent of the French secret services poisoned him. His body was transferred to Conakry, Guinea, where it was embalmed and secured in a sarcophagus. To this day, Cameroon authorities refuse to bury one of his great sons in his own country. It was a commando group of sabotage and killers of the French secret services that organized the murder of Moumié in Geneva. Swiss authorities knew the murderer, but under pressure of France, never judged him.
The judicial inquiry ended by a dismissal of charges. France dreaded a public procedure – for fear of revelations on its dirty war in Cameroon. For the French government, Cameroon had a particular strategic importance. Paris was afraid that in case of defeat against Moumié’s UPC, a left wing movement of independence, France would not only loose Cameroon, but also other colonies in Western Africa and Central Africa. Paris was convinced that it was in Cameroon it was going to win or loose the Cold War in Africa.
During 25 years, in an attempt to “save the country of communism”, French authorities committed horrible war crimes: more than 300 000 persons were deported, tortured and executed. Félix Moumié had to disappear and his movement had to be eliminated – at any price. 45 years later, Marthe Moumié visits the grave of her husband. She attempts to realize an old promise. On the eve of Felix Moumié’s death, she had made the pledge she would bury his body in his home land, Cameroon. But Marthe’s visit to the Conakry cemetery takes a dramatic turn: she finds out that Moumié’s grave had been broken into, and his coffin as well as the embalmed body had disappeared.
The film looks critically at France’s dirty war in Cameroon and investigates in minute detail the evidence of Moumié’s murder and the reactions of both French and Swiss authorities. As we do so, we accompany Marthe Moumié in her attempt to learn the truth about the murder of her husband and to obtain his rehabilitation.
