Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has signed into law new controls on the Internet that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has called repressive, local activists said Monday. The OSCE -- an intergovernmental security and human rights watchdog that Kazakhstan will chair next year -- had earlier urged Nazarbayev to veto the bill. The legislation will allow local courts to block websites, including foreign ones, and to class blogs and chatrooms as media. But Kazakhstan pressed ahead with the new law, with local rights activists confirming the legislation had been endorsed by the powerful president.
The Central Asian state says the law was aimed at "preventing unrest and protecting people's rights". Several websites, including the popular blogging service LiveJournal.com, are already inaccessible to most Kazakh Internet users.
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