American comedians at Saudi festival draw backlash from human rights groups

Clockwise from left: comedians Pete Davidson, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Kevin Hart. (Dia Dipasupil/Arturo Holmes/Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

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 Sept. 26, has styled itself as “the world’s largest comedy festival,” with sets from more than 50 star comedians, including Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr and Pete Davidson. Running through Oct. 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 U.S. intelligence report says happened at the behest of 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 a recent stand-up routine, 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 wrote last week on his website. “You’re performing for literally the most oppressive regime on earth.”

Shane Gillis, a fellow irreverent comedian, said he “took a principled stand” against accepting a “significant” offer to perform.

Atsuko Okatsuka shared a screenshot 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 cancelled,” Dave Chappelle said during his Saturday set, according to The New York Times. “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”

Last month, comedian Jim Jefferies argued 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,’” he told Von.

After his performance in Riyadh, Bill Burr said on his podcast 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 invested US$200 million in Penske Media and partnered with Vice Media Group, injected $3.5 billion into Uber, financed LIV Golf and attempted to merge it with rival PGA Tour, and taken Electronic Arts private (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, Human Rights Watch said 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,” wrote 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 U.S.-Saudi citizen, remains barred from exiting the country after previously being imprisoned and reportedly tortured over X posts about the crown prince, including one about Khashoggi’s murder.

Reporters Without Borders notes 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.”