An “underage” migrant, who was presented as being in a romantic relationship with an underage girl in a controversial German children’s channel television programme, has admitted he is actually an adult.

The documentary Malvina, Diaa and Love was broadcast in November on the publicly-funded German television channel Kika, which is directed at children aged three to 13, and has been slammed by many as “propaganda” as it favourably presents a largely one-sided relationship between a 16-year-old German girl and an adult Syrian asylum seeker.

The Syrian named Diaa was said to be around the same age as 16-year-old Malvina but later admitted he is actually 19 years old and some have even alleged he could be over 20, Die Welt reports.

The documentary, which portrays Malvina as madly in love with the Syrian, shows Diaa telling his girlfriend to behave more modestly, wear less revealing clothing, and even consider converting to Islam for him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRGgfz_l20s

“I must not put on short things, always only long things,” Malvina said in the programme to which Diaa explained: “I can not accept such a thing that my wife looks like this. This is totally difficult for Arab men.”

“He came and said that pork is not so good. I also stopped eating pork,” she added.

“I grew up in an Islamic-Arab culture. I believe in my culture and my religion,” Diaa said and added: “Religion gives you rules. Without this religion, you have no rules and without rules, you have no life.”

Many on social media slammed the broadcast of the programme on a television channel aimed at young children with some saying on Twitter that “Kika propagates Islamisation.”

The anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) commented about the programme on Twitter saying, “Selling out of the freedom rights of women & girls as normality?” and pointed out that the Syrian had been 18-year-old back in December of 2016.

The is not the first time some have attempted to promote the idea of asylum seekers getting into relationships with German girls as a means of integration. Last year the government funded Workers’ Welfare Association (AWO) invited well-known “flirt coach” Horst Wenzel to help asylum seekers pick up German girls.

German media as a whole was seen as totally uncritical of the migrant crisis according to a study carried out by the Hamburg Media School and the University of Leipzig last year. The authors of the study alleged that many media outlets simply refused to criticise the mass migration policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel and many actively engaged in pro-migrant rhetoric.