Maryam Monsef says Liberal leader Justin Trudeau directly apologized to her following the emergence of photos and video of him as a teacher wearing brown or blackface - and she says she accepts his apology.

Monsef, who was minister of Gender Equality and Minister of International Development in Trudeau's cabinet, moved to Peterborough from Afghanistan as a teen. She was elected MP for Peterborough-Kawartha in 2015 and is running again.

She tweeted a statement late Thursday saying she found out about the images on Wednesday evening.

"I was surprised and disappointed," she wrote.

Monsef wrote that "fresh wounds" have been opened up for people who've experienced "anti-black and other forms of racism."

She's experienced discrimination herself, she wrote, although it wasn't anti-black racism.

"I have been told to go back to my country and I have felt the indignity of exclusion," she wrote. "I've felt that hurt."

What Trudeau did was wrong, Monsef wrote, but he also apologized to Canadians.

"That was the right thing to do. The prime minister also reached out to me directly to offer his apology," Monsef wrote.

She accepted that apology, she adds, because in four years of working closely with Trudeau she's seen him work "tirelessly" toward "a stronger, better, more inclusive Canada."

Monsef is running for re-election in Peterborough-Kawartha against Conservative candidate Michael Skinner, NDP candidate Candace Shaw, Green party candidate Andrew MacGregor and People's Party of Canada candidate Alex Murphy.

The first photos of Trudeau in brownface showed him at a private costume party in 2001, when he was a teacher; they were published Wednesday evening by Time magazine.

Another photo of him in another brownface costume emerged later in the media, as well as a video from a separate incident.

The Toronto Star noted Thursday that the incident has garnered international attention, with news coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, BBC and the Guardian newspaper in the U.K.

Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, and is running for re-election. Other party leaders include NDP's Jagmeet Singh, Conservative Andrew Scheer, the Green party's Elizabeth May, the Bloc Qu�b�cois' Yves-Fran�ois Blanchet and the People's Party of Canada's Maxime Bernier.

The election is Oct. 21.

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Joelle.Kovach@peterboroughdaily.com

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