JAKARTA – Indonesia’s Foreign Minister recently expressed her disappointment to US representatives over an offensive cartoon published in American media.

“I have met with US congress members and I spoke to them about this cartoon issue,” Retno Marsudi said

Earlier this month, a US newspaper published a cartoon depicting an Indonesian women’s beach volleyball team as apes, with the title ‘Indonesia wins the World Cup in beach volleyball again’.

Apart from being offensive, Retno said that the cartoon was not based on any facts.

The cartoon, from the pen of a pair of well-known Danish cartoonists, may have actually been inspired by the recent successes of the Vanuatu women’s volleyball team.

But when you are of Aryan descent and poking fun at dark-skinned people on the other side of the equator, who cares about getting the facts of nationality and ethnicity right?

While the depiction of the women volleyballers as monkeys was probably aimed at the world class Melanesian girls from Vanuatu, it’s Indonesia that has called foul play.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marsudi said: “I told them we didn’t participate in the competition. That’s part of the reason why we think it weird that the cartoon was published. It is wrong.”

She suggested an inter-personal approach to building mutual respect to avoid cases such as this reoccurring in the future.

“This cartoon is proof that we need to encourage people-to-people contact to foster respect for one another,” Retno said.

The cartoon was created by Danish artistic duo Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler.

Their comic strip WuMo is considered quite popular in Europe and in the US.

The web’s largest catalogue of newspaper comic strips, GoComics, states that WuMo has appeared in numerous US newspapers since 2013, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe.

The cartoon has sparked some outrage by bloggers online.

“Having lived in America for 18 years I can tell you the American press is totally out of control and often downright criminal,” one blogger wrote.

“This is a perfect example of America’s Free Press gone wrong when they published a cartoon about Indonesians women’s participation in a volleyball game that they didn’t even participate in.

“I wish they had done it in Indonesia because based on the old Dutch rule, defamation of character is a criminal offence and the publications and the cartoonist in this case would be thrown in jail for a good long time for this offence.

“Shame on the US newspaper who published this degrading cartoon based on false information.

“You owe the Indonesian women’s volleyball team and Indonesian people a full page apology for this outrageous example of poor journalism.”