LiveJournal is still blocked in Kazakhstan – the national telecom operator started filtering it on October 7, although it never acknowledged this fact. Skullptor is sarcastic [ru]:

I think it’s a step in the right direction. Kazakhs should be barred from Internet on the whole – there are viruses, porn, violence and social networks. The nation’s health is above all.

When prime-minister Massimov was on a visit in Russia and took part in live interview on “Echo of Moscow” radio station, he was asked about the reasons of blockage. His reply was predictable – the head of the government said he was not aware of the problem. “I am a blogger myself and I access this service without any troubles”, he said [ru]. Finally, he promised to solve the issue asap upon return to Kazakhstan. Pycm posts a call on the prime-minister [ru]: “So, where’s the access to LJ? Haven’t you come back yet?”

Meanwhile, bloggers decided to appeal to Rakhat Aliyev. This person, former tycoon, former deputy chief of special services and ex-husbank of the presidential daughter, was sentenced in absentia in Kazakhstan for organized crime, abduction of people and preparation of a coup. He fled the country and now lives abroad, sporadically leaking wiretapped phone conversations of the higher officials. He also uses LiveJournal as a channel of broadcast. However, very few people in Kazakhstan sympathize to Aliyev – he has probably the worst reputation among public figures in Kazakhstan. The open letter was posted in Livejournal, which is accessed by the bloggers via proxy and anonimization websites [ru]:

On behalf of the Kazakhstani LiveJournal users, we ask you to delete your accounts on livejournal.com. We believe that this step will result in withdrawal of blockage of the service by the Kazakhstani providers. Such step of yours would demonstrate the understanding of the problems of Kazakhstani Internet users.
Dear users, if you support this initiative, please, leave “+1” in the comments section.

There was no response from Aliyev so far, but the topic has become one of the most popular posts, according to Yandex.Blogs monitoring service with more than 200 “signatures” under the letter. However, the initiative was also aroused some voices of protest – few people insisted that the blame should be put on the authorities, not on the blogger, even if it’s notorious Rakhat Aliyev. Adam-kesher says:

Some will say: “It’s censorship!” and will be, probably, right. Others will say: “What about social responsibility?” and that’s true too. I put my “+1” comment not because I am against freedom of expression, but because I don’t like when a criminal revels in the effect he makes, not thinking about others. And – yes – he is personally disgusting to me and I wish he was jailed. Meanwhile, I’d prefer him to post his “x-files” on his websites. For those who are interested, it is easier to use anonymizer to access these websites, than for the thousands of people log in to their accounts on LiveJournal.

Cross-posted on neweurasia.