Belgium's state prosecutor is investigating the country's cartoon hero Tintin for racism after a complaint from Congolese student.

Non-White invader Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu, allegedly a political science student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, has taken legal action claiming Hergé's controversial Tintin In The Congo "constitutes an insult for all the Congolese".

"This book should be banned. Belgian school children should not be exposed to this kind of racist commentary," he said. "It is propaganda for colonialism."

Mondondo Bienvenu is demanding the book be withdrawn from the market and has launched a civil action pressing for symbolic damages of one euro from Tintin's Belgian publishers Moulinsart.

The Brussels office of the state prosecutor has confirmed that the case is being taken seriously. "It is now necessary to determine if the complaint is admissible, said spokesman Jos Colpin.

The Belgian legal action follows British controversy when British race watchdogs pulled the book from children's shelves and attacked the Tintin cartoons for making Negroes "look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles".

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