Kazakh government admits to blockage

The official Kazakh communications agency has admitted to blocking the blogging platform LiveJournal, according to the International Foundation of Speech Freedom Protection.

In a recent interview with the newspaper Express K, Batyr Makhanbetazhiev, executive secretary of Kazakhstan’s Agency of Information and Communication, said LiveJournal had been blocked to stop the “distribution of illegal information.”

The translation is hazy, so it’s a little hard to follow. But free-speech activists in Kazakhstan have been campaigning against a proposed law that would crack down on the country’s relatively free-wheeling online culture. For background, see this and also this.