Borat has friend in State Dept.

Fictional gay cowboys and a faux reporter from Kazakhstan suffered human rights abuses in 2006 as crackdowns extended beyond flesh-and-blood victims to the Internet, award-winning films and noted plays worldwide, the State Department says.

Foreign governments banned or restricted access to a variety of big and little screen entertainment -- including the movies “Borat” and “Brokeback Mountain” -- as well as live events, the State Department says.

British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen -- creator of Borat, the crass Kazakh chronicler of the American condition -- and the gay cowboy love story that won three Oscars were hit with what it deemed violations of freedoms of speech and expression.

So were the “The Da Vinci Code,” “The Vagina Monologues” and even the popular Google Earth website, according to the department’s annual survey of global human rights practices released this week.