02 September,2009 01:45 PM IST | | ANI
A Congolese accountant is taking Tintin to court on charges of racism.
Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, 41, has accused judges in the cartoon hero's native Belgium of trying to bury his case to protect a "national symbol".
Bienvenu is claiming that Hergu00e9's controversial Tintin In The Congo is propaganda for colonialism and amounts to "racism and xenophobia", reports The Telegraph.
"Tintin''s little (black) helper is seen as stupid and without qualities. It makes people think that blacks have not evolved," he said.
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Two years ago, Bienvenu had launched a case in Belgium for symbolic damages of one euro from Tintin''s Belgian publishers Moulinsart, and demanded the book be withdrawn from the market.
However, since then his lawyer, Claude Ndjakanyi, said that the Belgian justice had not responded.
"Our request to access the dossier was judged premature even though the investigation has been running for two years," he said.
Ndjakanyi believes the silence was politically motivated: "It''s the symbol of Belgium that is under attack."u00a0
The lawyer said he would launch parallel proceedings in France and go "all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary".u00a0
Until 1960, the Congo remained a Belgian colony, and between 1885 and 1908 millions of Congolese are thought to have died under the brutal rule of Belgium''s King Leopold.
