Guinea, the "middle finger" and France’s “French Community” proposal.

De Gaulle president of France and founder of the Fifth Republic
traveled to Guinea with plans to intimidate Guinea
into accepting limited autonomy within the "French Community" in the place of Independence.
The "French Community" was ostensibly suppose
to be a medium for Corporation and support for progress of all the peoples involved including the French. But the Guineans knew better from their experience. They will be proven right by the very primitive way France will react to Guinea's refusal to be part of the "community". Most observers had pointed that the idea of the “community” was an attempt to undermine the emancipation struggle of the African people, despite a clear consensus attained at the just formed United Nations at the end of WWII stating the rights of all colonized peoples to be free.
After Guinea’s rebuff, De Gaulle swore “you want Independence??, you will get it with its consequences”.

France had colonized Guinea for quiet a while during which the French had exploited the country’s natural resources, used her citizens like forced laborers and even conscripted some to them to fight for France in wars including WWII. But that did not matter to the French anymore. The French decided to cut all links with Guinea and to destroy the country before leaving.
The French resolved they will take with them all what they considered they had been brought to Guinea by them. All equipment in public offices; telephone sets, furniture, even stationeries like pens, pencils and paper plus telephone and electric cables used to wire the cities all were collected and shipped to France. Even tar from the streets was scraped off with bulldozers and dump into the sea. Guinea, which France had exploited for years as a colony was, now left in pitch darkness; NO lights, NO telephones, NO office furniture, telephone-sets, paper, pen, or pencils. The few miles of paved roads too have been scraped off.
Everything was gone.
Strange enough today Guinea is one of the few former French colonies that can be considers as self-sufficient. Most of the former French colonies brutalized into staying in the “French Community” later received flag and anthem independence but within the community their economies and sovereignty had been well woven to remain within French control. And today most of those “French community” states are dysfunctional and on the brink of disintegration.

Here is the historic Speech by SEKOU TOURE in response to De Gaulle’s “French community” proposal. It is a landmark Freedom declaration.