In a subdued comment, Macron dubs French colonial yoke in Algeria as “crime against the human”

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron attempted on Saturday to end the controversy sparked off by his recent outspoken comments strongly condemning France’s heinous colonial past in Algeria.

Macron, a pro-European independent centrist who several recent polls have shown to be a frontrunner in the 2017 French presidential elections, was targeted by a wave of criticism this week from his right-wing opponents after he bluntly said France’s horrendous French colonial rule in Algeria was a “crime against humanity”.

“I am sorry to have offended you, to have hurt you,” Macron said on Saturday in the southeastern city of Toulon, responding to criticism of his comments from some French nationals who had to leave Algeria in the wake of its hard-won independence on July 5th 1962.

“But we must face this common, complex past if we want to move on and get along,” he said, alluding to historical links between Algeria and France, where many citizens hold both nationalities.

In a subdued comment during his Toulon election rally, Macron branded this time the harsh French colonial yoke in Algeria as “a crime against the human”, in a bid to defuse the uproar triggered off in France over his previous remarks made during a recent Algeria visit by dubbing the brutal French colonization in Algeria as “a crime against humanity”.

Emmanuel Macron further accused the far-right National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, of preventing hundreds of people from attending his speech.

About 100 demonstrators shouted “Macron, treason” outside the building where he made the speech and attempted to block the only entrance to the conference hall.

Marine Le Pen, who Macron looks likely to face in a second-round election run-off, castigated his comments on Algeria earlier this week, as did conservative candidate Francois Fillon in an interview with daily Le Figaro in addition to some other embittered right-wing politicians.