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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
American comedians at Saudi festival draw backlash from human rights
groups
By Liam Reilly, CNN
Updated:
4:45 PM EDT, Thu October 2, 2025
Source: CNN
A comedy festival in Saudi Arabia featuring high-profile American
performers is drawing intense criticism from human rights advocates
who say the star-studded event helps gloss over the kingdom’s ongoing
human rights abuses.
The Riyadh Comedy Festival, which kicked off on September 26, has
styled itself as “,” with sets from more than 50 star comedians,
including Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and Pete Davidson.
Running through October 9, the festival was organized by the Saudi
Tourism Authority as part of the kingdom’s push to attract more
visitors.
The festival also falls during the seventh anniversary of the
assassination of Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal
Khashoggi, which a US intelligence report says happened Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman.
That timing hasn’t been lost on the festival’s critics, who say the
high-profile American comics are lending legitimacy to a government
that represses dissent, jails activists and restricts free speech.
Marc Maron ridiculed the festival performers and the crown prince in ,
noting that “the same guy that’s gonna pay them is the same guy
that paid that guy to bonesaw Jamal Khashoggi … but don’t let that
stop the yuks!”
“I am disgusted, and deeply disappointed in this whole gross
thing,” comedian David Cross on his website. “You’re performing
for literally the most oppressive regime on earth.” , a fellow
irreverent comedian, said he “took a principled stand” against
accepting a “significant” offer to perform.
Atsuko Okatsuka of the festival’s offer — which she said she
rejected — that included a prohibition on making jokes or derogatory
remarks about Saudi Arabia, religion or the royal family.
Comedians defend themselves
Some of the invited comedians have publicly defended the festival,
citing America’s own free speech issues, the opportunity to bring
comedy to a socially conservative country or simply the allure of a big
paycheck.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk,
that you’ll get canceled,” Dave Chappelle said during his Saturday
set, . “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”
Last month, comedian Jim Jefferies to podcaster Theo Von: “One
reporter was killed by the (Saudi) government — unfortunate, but not
a f–king hill that I’m gonna die on.”
Pete Davidson, whose father died in the 9/11 terror attacks, was more
direct about the financial incentives: “I just know I get the
routing, and then I see the number, and I go, ‘I’ll go,’” .
After his performance in Riyadh, Bill Burr that it was a
“mind-blowing” experience.
“You think everybody’s going to be screaming ‘Death to America’
and they’re going to have like f–king machetes and want to chop my
head off,” he said. “Because this is what I’ve been fed about
that part of the world.”
Instead, Burr said, “They just wanted to laugh.”
“That there appears to be more freedom in the country is definitely
true, but the reality is that Saudi Arabia remains an absolute
authoritarian dictatorship where voices that criticize the government,
criticize the royal family, criticize the economic performance of the
public investment fund literally face decades and decades in prison,”
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World
Now, a non-profit founded by Khashoggi in 2018, told CNN.
“Superficial observation based on a few days in the city is really
just a pathetic and ignorant observation, ignoring the fact that at
this moment Saudi men and women are literally in solitary confinement
facing sentences of decades,” Whitson added.
Chappelle, Burr, Davidson and Jefferies did not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
Saudi soft power push
In recent years, the Saudi government has sought to rehabilitate its
global image through its state-owned sovereign wealth fund, using
cultural initiatives such as the Riyadh Comedy Festival as tools of
soft power.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at the Baker
Institute for Public Policy, told CNN that Saudi Arabia has “used the
soft power and mass appeal of sport, in particular, to generate a
global awareness that a process of change is underway.”
Since 2016, the kingdom’s fund has and , injected , and it with rival
PGA Tour, and . (The Uber and Penske Media investments came prior to
the killing of Khashoggi.)
Despite those efforts, human rights advocates continue to sound the
alarm about Saudi Arabia. Ahead of the comedy festival, the kingdom was
using comedy to “deflect attention from its brutal repression of free
speech and other pervasive human rights violations.”
“American comics heading to Riyadh might pause to consider that only
three months ago, Saudi journalist Turki al-Jasser was executed for
exercising his right to free speech in the same satirical way that they
do on stage,” Abdullah Alaoudh, the senior director for countering
authoritarianism at the Middle East Democracy Center.
Indeed, on the anniversary of Khashoggi’s killing, the Riyadh
festival stands in stark contrast with the state of speech in the
country.
Saad Almadi, a 75-year-old dual US-Saudi citizen, after previously
being imprisoned and tortured over X posts about the crown prince,
including one about Khashoggi’s murder.
that “independent media are non-existent in Saudi Arabia, and Saudi
journalists live under heavy surveillance, even when abroad.”
Whitson suggested that while her late friend Khashoggi “would be very
happy to see the Saudi people having an opportunity to laugh,” he
would also have “hated the fact that these comedians were
participating in this kind of comedy festival, voluntarily agreeing for
money to zip their lips and bow their heads to the crown prince.”
“It is the very antithesis of why he came to the United States,”
Whitson continued, “why he fled to the United States, and ultimately
why Saudi Arabia murdered him.”
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