Posted on April 28, 2010

‘Racist’ Tintin Book Faces Ban in Belgium

David Williams, Sky News (Isleworth, Middlesex), April 28, 2010

Eighty years after it first went to print, a Tintin comic could be stripped from shops in his home country of Belgium.

Judges are set to rule whether to remove the story of the intrepid explorer’s first African adventure after a Congolese man claimed it is racist.

Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo wants Tintin in the Congo–the second in the celebrated children’s series–to be axed for its ignorant depiction of native Africans.

Creator Hergé defended his book, first published in 1930, in later life and said any stereotypes merely reflected contemporary colonialist views.

The Belgian courts may follow a recent compromise decision in Britain and place a sticker warning of offensive content instead.

That was the result when the UK’s Commission for Racial Equality called for the comic to be banned in 2007.

Mr Mondondo has put his case to Belgian and French judges before, but his latest legal challenge faces some scepticism.

Online comic magazine actubd.com accused him of lying about his profession, amid other doubts that he will be unable to pay his own lawyers.