What Comedians Should Know About Executions in Saudi Arabia

Let’s start with the good news: As an exercise in artistic wash, the Riyadh Comedy Festival was a miserable failure. The Saudi regime spends billions of dollars promoting cultural and sporting events in an attempt to distract attention from its endless human rights violations. This time, he only succeeded in drawing attention to them.

Actors at the event, which ran from September 26 to October 9, faced a torrent of criticism from NGOs and, more importantly, from fellow comedians. Arrested development “I am disgusted and deeply disappointed by this whole awful thing,” star David Cross wrote, condemning artists willing to “condone this totalitarian feudalism” in exchange for a huge paycheck. British comedian Stuart Lee targeted “evil, immoral and deceitful scoundrels” who take Saudi money to perform.

Let’s start with the good news: As an exercise in artistic wash, the Riyadh Comedy Festival was a miserable failure. The Saudi regime spends billions of dollars promoting cultural and sporting events in an attempt to distract attention from its endless human rights violations. This time, he only succeeded in drawing attention to them.

Actors at the event, which ran from September 26 to October 9, faced a torrent of criticism from NGOs and, more importantly, from fellow comedians. Arrested development “I am disgusted and deeply disappointed by this whole awful thing,” star David Cross wrote, condemning artists willing to “condone this totalitarian feudalism” in exchange for a huge paycheck. British comedian Stuart Lee targeted “evil, immoral and deceitful scoundrels” who take Saudi money to perform.

“There has been far more debate about freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia in the past two weeks than when the Saudi government executed a journalist on national security grounds in June,” Tulane University professor Andrew Lieber noted in his Carnegie Endowment article. That journalist, Turki Al-Jasser, founded the online news outlet Al-Mashhad Al-Saudi, but it is known among the opposition community that the real reason for his arrest, torture, conviction on terrorism charges, and execution was his anonymous satirical Twitter account mocking the regime. Like all dictators, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is terrified of comedians, and laughing at his expense is a crime punishable by death.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is He suffers from an unprecedented execution crisis. Last year, the authorities executed 345 people. Previously, the highest number of executions in a calendar year was 196 in 2022. This year, the regime is on pace to break its own blood-soaked record. At the time of writing, there have been at least 292 executions in just over nine months.

In 2023, Reprieve and the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights Analyzed Over a decade of implementation data. In the five years before Bin Salman and his father, King Salman, took power, the average number of executions was 71 annually. This year, the regime is on track to kill nearly 400 people — a five-fold increase that is shockingly underreported.

Of course you won’t hear about this at the festival. Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka posted the contract she was offered (and rejected), which explicitly prohibits any comedic material that mocks the Saudi royal family, government, legal system, religion, or culture. Jim Jefferies was dropped from the bill after a reckless comment about a reporter being “murdered by the government” – an apparent reference to his assassination The Washington Post Writer Jamal Khashoggi.

The performers who accepted provided well-rehearsed justifications. The most honest admitted that they were mercenaries. “They pay me enough money to turn a blind eye,” Tim Dillon said. “I saw the number, and I said: ‘I’ll go,'” Pete Davidson frankly admitted.

Dave Chappelle sought to paint his critics as hypocrites, saying in his speech that it was “easier to talk here than it is in America.” While there may be a grain of truth in this when the Trump administration is pressuring networks to keep comedians away from the president on the air, in Saudi Arabia, anyone making the kind of jokes about the country’s rulers that got Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert into trouble would be in a torture cell faster than you can say “freedom of speech.”

Other artists insisted they had noble intentions. Louis CK claimed that the festival contributes to the “opening up” of a closed society. Omid Jalili put it this way: “Allowing international shows in Saudi Arabia, especially comedy, subtly expands what can be thought and said in society. Every laugh at a taboo topic changes norms, even if only slightly.”

Again, this is half true. Young Saudis enjoy freedoms that their parents never dared to dream of, but they come at a very high cost and with strict limits. The social contract imposed between the Saudi government and its citizens mirrors the contract offered to comedy festival performers: whatever you do, you must never criticize the authorities. American comedians who violated the terms were not invited; Saudi citizens who break the rules end up dying.

This is the fatal flaw in the selfish logic of Aziz Ansari, who claimed to have “thought a lot” about whether to appear at the festival or not. “There are people who don’t agree with the things the government does,” he said. Delivery time“If the worst behavior of the government is attributed to these people, it is not fair.”

I had to flee Saudi Arabia and live in exile because “I don’t agree with the things the government is doing.” Turki Al-Jasser and Jamal Khashoggi were killed because they did not get along sometimes either. In August, Jalal Al-Labbad was executed for the “crime” of attending demonstrations demanding basic human rights when he was 15 years old. His brother Fadel was executed in 2019, also on protest-related charges. The third brother, Mohammed, is on death row and is at imminent risk of execution. In August, his death sentence was upheld, along with the death sentence against Yousef al-Manasif, another child who was arrested for allegedly participating in a demonstration, tortured into making false confessions and accused of terrorist offences.

Jimmy Carr talks about being a “defender of absolute freedom of expression,” but he has just been paid handsomely to launder the reputation of an authoritarian regime that has zero tolerance for dissent. In Saudi Arabia, telling the wrong kind of joke can lead to serious, even fatal, consequences. Salman Al-Awda faces the death penalty for “mocking and mocking the government’s achievements.”

Only eight executions were carried out in Saudi Arabia during the two weeks of the festival. I say “only” because this was a relatively quiet period of 2025, with executions averaging more than one per day. Two of them were for non-violent drug crimes, two were for murder, and three were for protest-related crimes, including Muhammad Al-Ammar, who was executed on the last day of the festival, for “terrorism” crimes related to participating in demonstrations and sit-ins in Qatif, during the Arab Spring.

So what should? Artists and athletes invited to Saudi Arabia do? We’re not saying they should boycott the kingdom: Saudis deserve to see great performances and elite sports, and whether to perform there is a matter of personal conscience. But we say that these artists and athletes should come with their eyes open, admit that they are helping to normalize a brutal and oppressive system, and expect to be criticized.

We need more international stars as brave as Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton, who raced in Saudi Arabia and drew attention to the execution of accused children while he was there. The boy he mentioned, Abdullah Al-Huwaiti, has been imprisoned since he was arrested and tortured when he was fourteen years old, and is still awaiting execution. He can be executed at any time.

This week, the biggest stars in men’s tennis will be in Riyadh for the Six Kings Championship. In December, there will be major music performances at Soundstorm. It is a time for peers to speak out and for journalists to ask tough questions.

If enough people are willing to pull back the shimmering curtain to reveal the harsh reality, these efforts to whitewash Saudi Arabia’s reputation for sports and culture will fail, just like the comedy festival. Now, that would be pretty funny.