Tintín demandado por racista

A Congolese accountant is to launch a lawsuit in France against Tintin for racism, accusing judges in the cartoon hero's native Belgium of trying to bury his case to protect a "national symbol".

Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, 41, is taking legal action claiming Hergé's controversial Tintin In The Congo is propaganda for colonialism and amounts to "racism and xenophobia".

"Tintin's little (black) helper is seen as stupid and without qualities. It makes people think that blacks have not evolved," he said.

Mr Mbutu Mondondo launched a case in Belgium two years ago for symbolic damages of one euro from Tintin's Belgian publishers Moulinsart, and demanded the book be withdrawn from the market.

But since then his lawyer, Claude Ndjakanyi, said there had been no response from Belgian justice. "Our request to access the dossier was judged premature even though the investigation has been running for two years," he said.

Mr Ndjakanyi claimed the silence was politically motivated: "It's the symbol of Belgium that is under attack." The lawyer said he would launch parallel proceedings in France and go "all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary".

In 2007, British race watchdogs pulled the book from children's shelves and attacked the Tintin cartoons for making black Africans "look like monkeys and talk like fulastres".

Two weeks ago the work was removed from the shelves of Brooklyn's municipal library ***owing a complaint from a reader that it "had illustrations that were racially offensive and inappropriate for children".

Tintin and his dog Snowy are a rare unifying symbol in Belgium – a divided nation where postcolonial guilt over Belgian's record in the Congo still runs high.

The Congo remained a Belgian colony until 1960 and between 1885 and 1908 millions of Congolese are thought to have died under the brutal rule of Belgium's King Leopold II.

Georges Remi, the Tintin cartoonist who worked under the Hergé pen-name, reworked the book in 1946 to remove references to Congo as Belgian colony.

But it still contained images such as a black woman bowing to Tintin and saying: "White man very great White mister is big juju man!" Moulinsart, Tintin's publishers, argued that the whole row was "silly" and that book must be seen in its historical context: "To read in the 21st century a Tintin album dating back to 1931 requires a minimum of intellectual honesty," it said. "If one applied the 'politically correct' filter to great artists or writers, we could no longer publish certain novels of Balzac, Jules Verne, or even some Shakespeare plays."

Mr Ndjakanyi said this argument did not wash. "When the album was written there was no legal disposition incriminating racism. In 2009 there is. This isn't about history but the law."

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* Pretende que sea retirado de la venta
* Ya había presentado una denuncia en Bélgica, pero el proceso está en punto muerto
* Por eso, ha decido acudir a la justicia francesa
* La sociedad, que explota comercialmente la obra, juzga de "ridículas" las acusaciones

Un contable congolés, residente en Bélgica, quiere denunciar el carácter "racista" del controvertido cómic "Tintín en el Congo", el cual desea que sea retirado de la venta, según ha indicado uno de sus abogados.

Mbutu Mondondo, 41 años, ya había presentado una denuncia en Bélgica en 2007 en virtud de la ley belga de 1981 que reprime el racismo. Había exigido la prohibición de la obra de Hergé, publicada en 1930-31 cuando Bélgica colonizaba la República actual y democrática del Congo (RDC).

Después de dos años, el proceso está en punto muerto, explicó uno de los abogados del demandante, Jean-Claude Ndjakanyi. Ante esta situación Mbutu Mondondo decidió acudir a la justicia francesa.

Esta queja "podría tomar la forma de una acción en cesación que se referiría a la prohibición de la venta de la obra " en Francia, precisó Ndjakanyi.

"No es admisible que Tintín pueda gritar a aldeanos que son forzados a trabajar en la construcción de una vía de ferrocarril o qué su perro Milú les trata de personas perezosas", ha explicado Mbutu Mondondo en el momento realizar su queja en Bélgica.

La sociedad Moulinsart, que explota comercialmente la obra de Hergé, juzga de "ridículas" las acusaciones de racismo o de colonialismo hacia Hergé.

"Juzgar el contenido de una obra vale sólo si se la repone en el contexto de la época", subraya Moulinsart en un comunicado.

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Geld dijo:

La "perversos" África es infinitamente más digna que la ostentosa cortesana occidental, que desdentada y moribunda denuncia a todo aquel que plasma este valor no cuantificable...

Riefenstahl sufriría la misma condena que Hergè al mostrar mediante la fotografía la dignidad de África

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