Tuesday, 15 November 2005

KAZAKHSTAN THREATENS TO SUE COMEDIAN

Published in News Digest

By empty (11/15/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Kazakhstan\'s Foreign Ministry threatened legal action Monday against a British comedian who wins laughs by portraying the central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport. Sacha Baron Cohen, who portrays a spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat in his \"Da Ali G Show,\" has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan, the world\'s ninth largest country yet still little known to many in the West, on British and U.S.
Kazakhstan\'s Foreign Ministry threatened legal action Monday against a British comedian who wins laughs by portraying the central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport. Sacha Baron Cohen, who portrays a spoof Kazakh television presenter Borat in his \"Da Ali G Show,\" has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan, the world\'s ninth largest country yet still little known to many in the West, on British and U.S. channels. Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he hosted the annual MTV Europe Music Awards show in Lisbon earlier this month as Borat, who arrived in an Air Kazakh propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot clutching a vodka bottle. \"We do not rule out that Mr. Cohen is serving someone\'s political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way,\" Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev told a news briefing. \"We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind.\" He declined to elaborate. (Reuters)
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The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.

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