EU withdraws anti-BRIC video

It’s official: struggling Europe is scared of India, China and Brazil (BRIC). Its Directorate of Enlargement has been forced to withdraw a propaganda video after complaints of racism over the way it depicts Indians, Chinese and Brazilians. Dipankar De Sarkar reports.

It’s official: struggling Europe is scared of India, China and Brazil (BRIC). Its Directorate of Enlargement has been forced to withdraw a propaganda video after complaints of racism over the way it depicts Indians, Chinese and Brazilians.

HT Image

The video, made to popularise the 27-nation EU among young Europeans, shows a white European woman overcoming three aggressive male warriors from India, China and Brazil in a dark and desolate warehouse.

Dressed in a yellow tracksuit in the manner of the Tarantino film Kill Bill, she first faces a Chinese kung-fu fighter. She then confronts an Indian practitioner of kalaripayattu.

The last man she sees off is a black Brazilian expert in capoeira, a martial art. As the three men surround her she multiplies and encircles the men. They drop their weapons before disappearing.

The women then become the EU’s trademark circle of yellow stars, and the video says, “The more we are, the stronger we are...” Peter Stano, the Brussels-based spokesman for the Commissioner on Enlargement, told HT that “the video was withdrawn after it attracted complaints of racism.”