Outrage leads library to drop Tintin’s ban

STOCKHOLM

Officials at the Kulturhuset library in Stockholm have caved into a storm of criticism, reversing a decision to remove Tintin comic books from its shelves, saying the move happened “too fast,” reported The Local, an English-language daily in Sweden.

“The decision happened too fast,” Kulturhuset head Eric Sjöström and the organization’s artistic director, Behrang Miri, said in a statement released yesterday.The reversal comes after a report in yesterday’s daily Dagens Nyheter in which Miri said the library planned to remove Tintin comics from its shelves.
“The image the Tintin books give of Africans is Afro-phobic, for example. Africans are a bit dumb, while Arabs sit on flying carpets and Turks smoke water pipes,” he told the paper.

But after criticism of the move erupted in Swedish media on Sept. 24, Miri changed his stance. “I wanted to highlight an opinion piece about issues of discrimination, but realize now that it’s wrong to ban books,” Miri said in a statement. However, Sjöström applauded Miri for prompting a discussion about discrimination. “The issues of discrimination, equality and norms continue to be debated,” Sjöström said.