The description of this Borat 2 petition reads in part: “This movie is full of racism and xenophobia. They completely desecrate and humiliate Kazakhstan and the dignity of Kazakh nation.

“If the film was made about a country that the author himself came up with. But no, this movie makes fun of a real country where real people live. This film creates a new problem for the citizens of such a great country with a great history. Every time we have to give explanations to foreigners that this film was made as a joke.”

Other Kazakh Twitter users have been equally critical. For example, one wrote: “Borat is fine as long as you don’t live in eastern europe. If you do it’s not. It’s just outrageous and racist (as most westerners are towards us). Imagine the same film about Blacks/Jews.”

Another tweeted: “Borat is a piece of s***, when I was working the US everyone were making jokes about me being Kazakh.When I visit Europe, people know about my country only from this movie. It’s humiliating to answer these questions, like yes, my country is real, no, we r not the same as it shown.”

Previously, Cohen has defended his use of Kazakhstan as the country Borat is from. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2006, for example, he said: “I always had faith in the audience that they would realize that this was a fictitious country and the mere purpose of it was to allow people to bring out their own prejudices.

“And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater. The joke is not on Kazakhstan.

“I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist—who believe that there’s a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent has been raised to nine years old.”

One Kazakh Twitter user seemed to agree with Cohen when they tweeted his take on Subsequent Moviefilm: “I used to hear a lot of jokes when I was abroad about Borat and Kazakhstan. Now I don’t take it serious, but it says a lot about the joker. That’s the criteria for identifying idiots.”