The famous Tintin series of graphic novels from Belgium included
adventures in the Belgian Congo, and they depicted realities of
colonization. There have been demands to censor the books over that.
When it comes to judging Belgian colonialism, we need not bother
thinking of Tintin. The realities of the Congo were oppression from
beginning to end. Initially, the Congo was King Leopold's personal
possession, and he treated the inhabitants so cruelly that even the
main European colonial powers (exploiters themselves) were ashamed of
it. That took some doing.
We can't change the past, but that part of the past calls for vigorous
condemnation.
The question here, though, is whether to attack the fictional Tintin
books today as a stand-in for the real exploitation of real people in
the past.
The passages criticized in the article clearly depict aspects of the
colonial system. Whether they were specifically vicious, or merely
illustrated aspects of a system which was vicious overall, depends on
the specific context, which the article does not go into.
Be that as it may, to try to "sanitize" Tintin by falsifying the parts
that refer in passing to the colonial system would be pointless
damage, that would not do any good against present and future
injustice, let alone past injustice.
What could do good is to add an appendix to point out the glimpses of
the colonial system in the story, and give the start of an overall
picture of the oppression that those glimpses showed parts of. Today's
readers could learn something important from that.