Borat website pulled by Kazakhstan authorities

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as 'Borat'. Picture / Reuters

ALMATY - The authorities in Kazakhstan, angered by a British comedian's satirical portrayal of a boorish, sexist and racist Kazakh television reporter, have pulled the plug on his alter ego's website.

Sacha Baron Cohen used his Borat character's website www.borat.kz to respond sarcastically to legal threats from the Central Asian state's Foreign Ministry.

A Kazakh-appointed organisation regulating websites that end in .kz confirmed it had suspended Cohen's site.

"We've done this so he can't badmouth Kazakhstan," Nurlan Isin, president of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies, said.

As Borat, Cohen hosted the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon last month and described shooting dogs for fun and said his wife could not leave Kazakhstan as she was a woman.

Afterwards, Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said it could not rule out that he was under "political orders" to denigrate Kazakhstan's name and threatened to sue him.

- REUTERS