White House chides Kazakhstan over Borat web censorship

The thin veil separating reality from Borat just got thinner. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice presented a State Department report in Washington yesterday criticizing the government of Kazakhstan for human rights abuses, political assassinations, and restrictions of online freedom of speech -- specifically, for yanking the borat.kz domain:

The report cited Borat's loss of his Kazakh webpage www.borat.kz in late 2005 alongside court cases and limits on free speech faced by the few domestic media critical of Kazakhstan's long-serving President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

"The government deemed as offensive the content of a satirical site controlled by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and revoked the .kz domain," the report said.

Link to Reuters item, and Defamer says funny stuff about it here: Link.

Previously on BB:

Borat = Mahir 2.0, but ees niiiice.

Kazakhstan pre-emptively inserts self in Borat moviefilm joke