Jakarta (ANTARA) – Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s spokesperson, Lalu Muhamad Iqbal, commended the Malaysian government’s decision to ban the circulation of a comic titled ‘When I was a Kid 3’ that contains content insulting Indonesian migrant workers (PMIs).”The comic uses the word ‘monkey’ referring to our PMIs,” Iqbal stated on Friday when asked for a response to Indonesia’s stance regarding the Malaysian comic. Regardless of whether the term was aimed at Indonesians or not, one part of the comic that tells the story of a father, who teaches his child to call humans “monkeys,” is still uneducative, he stressed. “From an educational perspective, it is very uneducative and degrading to human dignity,” he remarked. The comic, created by Cheeming Boey, is an illustrated story about his childhood. In ‘When I Was a Kid’ volume 3, chapter “Coconuts II”, Boey tells a story during his childhood when his father asked him to see a monkey. However, it was not a monkey that he saw, but rather, an Indonesian domestic worker working in his house. The working woman was called a “monkey” because of her skill at climbing coconut trees.

Source: Antara News Agency