Tintin turns 90 amid racial slurs
BRUSSELS: Tintin will mark his 90th birthday this year with a return to controversy as his Belgian creator’s heirs release a new edition of Tintin in the Congo, a work from 1930 that draws accusations of racism.
The boy reporter’s adventure in the then Belgian colony was among the first Tintin stories to be serialised by the artist Herge, and his widow’s firm is launching a remastered digital version in colour to celebrate 90 years since the strip cartoon character first appeared in a Brussels newspaper in 1929.
The publishers dismissed suggestions that the story, which features charicatural black Africans with fat, red lips and wearing loincloths, was problematic: “Dialogue is most important and the work of deconstruction, decolonisation, is just as important,” Robert Vangeneberg said. |
African News Agency (ANA) FOUR men went on trial on Thursday over the theft of a gold coin the size of a manhole cover from one of Germany’s flagship museums in a daring night-time heist using a ladder and a wheelbarrow.
German authorities believe the 100kg Canadian “Big Maple Leaf” – once recognised as the biggest gold coin in the world – has been melted down since its theft from Berlin’s Bode Museum in March last year. Prosecutors say three of the suspects broke into the museum through an upstairs window and used a ladder, wheelbarrow and rope to extract the coin from a bullet-proof glass.
The fourth suspect was a museum guard accused of helping them.
The coin, more than half a metre in diameter, 3cm thick and made from ultra-pure gold, is one of just six produced by the Royal Canadian Mint in 2007 and was lent to the museum by a private owner. It has a face value of $1 million (R13.8m) but is thought to be worth four times as much.
It was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest gold coin in the world at the time it was made, although Australia has since minted one even bigger.
Like other Canadian coins it bears the image of Canada’s head of state, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.
The suspects were not identified under German legal rules.
Three of them are related and three were under the age of 21 at the time of the crime, which means the trial took place in a youth court.
The men hid their faces behind magazines as they entered the court and during the proceedings.
All are charged with serious theft, said the court. German media say the men could face up to three years and 10 months in jail.
The Bode Museum has one of the world’s largest coin collections with more than 540 000 items. | Reuters African News Agency (ANA)