Condi Rice Defends Borat

by publicreader | March 7, 2007 at 03:42 pm

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Condi Rice may not be a fan of Borat, but she and the U.S. State Department have something to say about the fate of his web page: it was taken down by the Kazakh censors. While not giving him top diplomatic billing in the latest State publication on human rights in Kazhakstan, the comedian does get a credit in the annual report. According to Michael Stern of Reuters:

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.

While Borat's section of the report is vanishingly brief, the list of human rights violations in the one-party oil rich state is more extensive, including fatal military hazings, a flawed election, lack of an independent judiciary, increased restrictions on free speech, wide -ranging corruption, trafficking in persons and societal discrimination. There is a fine irony in this list. Some would argue that apart from first and the last two , the items here paraphrased describe recent trends in the United States as well.

But Condi will probably not raise that point.

Related Link: BBC Country Profile: Kazakhstan