Jokey response to legal threat

Sacha Baron Cohen has responded to legal threats over his Kazakh TV reporter Borat – by further mocking the Asian country.

The government of Kazakhstan threatened to take Cohen to court after his creation hosted the MTV Europe awards. They were furious about his jokey references to shooting dogs for fun and subjugating women,  and claimed he might be serving political orders to tarnish  their nation's reputation.

Now he has posted a response – in character - on Borat's official website, www.borat.kz.

He recorded a short message saying: 'I like to state, I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my government's position to sue this Jew.

'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.'

After the MTV awards, Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev said: ‘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.’

‘We view Mr Cohen's behaviour at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with ethics and civilised behaviour.

‘We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind.’

Kazakhstan’s Embassy has previously complained of his portrait of the world’s ninth largest country as ‘a land of Stone Age people who mistreat women and hate Jews’.

Published: 26 Nov 2005