Borat anthem gaffe offends Kazakh shooting team
A screen grab shows a gold medal winning member of the Kazakhstan shooting team listening to the spoof anthem. – Courtesy Youtube
MOSCOW: Kazakhstan has called the playing of a spoof of its national anthem at an international sporting event “a scandal” and demanded an investigation of the incident.
Maria Dmitrienko won a gold medal for Kazakhstan on Thursday at the Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait, but during the award ceremony the public address system broadcast the spoof anthem from the 2006 movie “Borat,” which offended many Kazakhs by portraying the country as backward and degenerate.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov told the ITAR-Tass news agency the incident “is, of course, a scandal and demands a thorough investigation, which we intend to conduct.”
ITAR-Tass quoted shooting team member Oksana Stavitskaya as saying that Asian Shooting Federation President Sheikh Salman al-Sabah had apologised to the team.
“Sheikh Salman personally apologised to us. He recognised that the use of the music from the scandalous film in place of the anthem of Kazakhstan was completely a mistake of the organisers. He explained that the awards ceremony was conducted by a firm under contract,” Stavitskaya said.
The Kazakh news agency Tengri quoted team Coach Anvar Yunusmetov as saying tournament organisers had downloaded various countries’ national anthems from the Internet.
I am also fond of comedy and appreciated its comedy version but particularly targeting KAZAKHISTAN because it is a Muslim country and it people hate Jews is disgusting and should be objected
I came to know through so many sources that KAZAKHISTAN is the only country which is strictly against "JEWS" to teach them a lesson ISRAELI (JEWISH LOBBY") made this Movie BORAT ,their Media so called TIMES MAGAZINE,LIFE,NEWSWEEK presented this movie as the best comedy movie .By making this movie they degraded this nation in whole world.
It's like when the leader of the Czech Republic visited Pakistan some years ago, the highway from the airport was decorated with the black and white checkered flag used in sport car races.
I have seen the movie 'Borat'…full blown comedy…it is banned in Arab countries but not in Uzbekistan…his next movie is 'The Dictator'…