No Badmouthing Under Kazakh Domain

Michael Hedges - December 14, 2005

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis was a rather humorless affair. Grumpy delegates representing both the wired and un-wired worlds traded barbs over who or what should manage internet domain names. Imagine the difference if organizers had invited British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to moderate.

Kazakhstan to Borat:
"Take a hike"

Cohen is famous for “Da Ali G Show” on US cable network HBO. One of his satirical characters is Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh TV reporter, and he has upset the Kazakh government. They have even threatened to sue.

Now the character Borat is even more famous as the Association of Kazakh IT Companies pulled the plug on the website www.borat.kz. Company president Nurlan Isin told Reuters, “he can go and do whatever he wants at other domains. He can’t badmouth Kazakhstan under the kz domain.”

The government appointed regulator officially shut down the website Tuesday (December 13) for operating more than one server. Kazakh authorities were reportedly steamed at Cohen’s response – in the Borat character – to their displeasure, which followed Borat’s performance at the MTV Europe Music Awards program.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yerzhan Ashykbayev suggested that Cohen is “serving someone’s political order” and described the MTV appearance as “utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with ethics and civilized behavior".

Borat – the character – responded in kind: "Since 2003... Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world. Women can now travel on inside of bus, homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hat and age of consent has been raised to eight years old."

In 2003 the Kazakh state telecom Kazakhtelekom was ordered to block access to opposition or “impartial” websites said to be “destructive” to the state, according to a Reporters Sans Frontières report.

In the week leading up to the final WSIS meeting a war heated up between the US and the European Union over wrestling “control” over domain protocols. Before the Summit even began, US State Secretary Condoleeza Rice sent a diplomatically strong letter to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw explaining – in no uncertain terms – that the US was not about to let a new and different governing structure for the internet be designed by the same people who decided that Tunisia – a paragon of media freedom – host the Summit. Delegates were “moved.”

With the primary issue at WSIS decided so early and so quickly, a bit more levity would have been in order.

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