Gay cowboys displaying physical affection, and a fictitious reporter/hack from Kazakhstan are just a few to name who have suffered human rights abuses in 2006. “Brokeback Mountain” and “Borat” may be the most notorious two, but there are many other within the entertainment industry that have grown accustomed to having some of the content that is produced banned or restricted by foreign governments.
In the Washington Post, a source from the State Department was quoted as saying, “foreign governments banned or restricted access to a variety of big and little screen entertainment as well as live events”.Other movies that were either banned or censored included “The Da Vinci Code,” and “The Vagina Monologues”. This is not to say that only movies are subject to censorship. The popular Google Earth website has been banned in China, and other rogue/terrorist/communist states.
The most direct act against an individual by a state government would have to be Baron Cohen, who has vexed the authoritarian Kazakh government with his mocking and rocketed to fame in the film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”. Kazakhstan took control of the registration of .kz Internet domains in 2005 and then revoked Baron Cohen’s Borat domain, since relocated, because it deemed his site offensive.
