Congo, Oct 1(ANI): A Congo- born campaigner has urged the court to ban a Tintin book alleging that Africans' cartoons depicted in the book are racist.
Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu had earlier initiated criminal charges against the book but the case was delayed by a dispute over which court was empowered to try the case.
"What poses a problem today is not (author] Herge, it's the commercialisation of a cartoon book which manifestly diffuses ideas based on racial superiority," his lawyer Ahmed L'Hedim said.
Bienvenu's claims were backed by UK Commission for Racial Equality, which said Tintin in the Congo contained "hideous racial prejudice" following which the volume has since been sold in Britain with a sticker warning.
Tintin,which was created by Belgian author and illustrator Georges Remi, better known as Herge, was published in 1931 and the modern version of the original text is sued over reacist claims.
Tintin in the Congo first appeared in Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle as a comic strip in 1930-31, part of the popular Adventures of Tintin series.
The petitioner has also urged the court to ban the book's French and Dutch edition sold in Belguim.
Publisher Casterman and Moulinsart,which holds Tintin copyright would present their counter-arguments at the 14 October hearing in Brussels.
"Asking a tribunal to make a warning is a form of censorship," a lawyer representing Moulinsart and Casterman Alain Berenboom said.
He warned that if the trend continued "we'll be asking to ban works by Charles Dickens which contain anti-Semitic undertones".
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