Six Czech tourists fined for sporting Borat mankinis in Kazakhstan

These tourists managed to get themselves arrested in Borat's homeland of Kazakhstan. Photo / informburo.kz, via AP

Around the time Borat was released in 2006, who among us weren't guilty of responding to everything with "very naaice" or dressing up in his eye-boggling swimsuit for a laugh.

While we were all cracking up at Sacha Baron Cohen's hit mockumentary, the people of Kazakhstan - the homeland of the film's fictional cental character - weren't laughing. They found the whole thing deeply offensive.

So it's little wonder that six tourists have been detained in the capital Astana for taking the whole Borat joke way too far.

The men, from the Czech Republic, were detained by authorities after they were caught wearing Borat's lime green, G-string mankini and curly black wigs while trying to take a group photo in front of a "I love Astana" sign.

The film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan did not go down well in Kazakhstan. Photo / Supplied

Local police, who did not think the men's stunt was nearly as funny as they thought it was, detained the men and fined them 22,500 tenge, or $100, each for minor hooliganism.

Borat, the socially inept, racist, Pamela Anderson-obsessed newsreader portrayed by Cohen in the film, did not go down well in Kazakhstan upon its release.

The film, which had the extended title of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, caused a huge amount of offence, with Kazakh people furious their country had been portrayed as backward and degenerate.

But the country's Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov later conceded the controversial film did wonders to boost tourism to the little-known Central Asian nation.

"With the release of this film, the number of visas issued by Kazakhstan grew tenfold," local news agencies quoted Mr Kazykhanov as telling a session of Parliament in 2012.

"I am grateful to Borat for helping attract tourists to Kazakhstan."