Marc Maron, Shane Gillis and other top comedians have openly criticized their peers for participating in the Riyadh Comedy Festival, a state-sponsored event in Saudi Arabia that Human Rights Watch said was designed to deflect attention from the country’s “brutal repression of free speech” and other human rights violations.
Maron, the host of the “WTF” podcast, questioned how the event would be promoted. “From the folks that brought you 9/11,” he riffed in a stand-up bit posted to Instagram last week. “Two weeks of laughter in the desert, don’t miss it.”
Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States, is an authoritarian monarchy known for limiting free speech. For more than two decades, it has been at the center of a continuing legal battle in which survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, victims’ relatives and insurance companies accuse Saudi government agents in the United States of having provided “an essential support network” for the hijackers.
In 2021, the Biden administration held the country responsible for the killing of the Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The seventh anniversary of Khashoggi’s death will occur during the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which began on Friday and will run through Oct. 9. (The Saudi royal court has denied that it ordered Khashoggi’s killing.)
The event, billed as the “world’s largest comedy festival,” will feature more than 50 international comedians, including Aziz Ansari, Hannibal Buress, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Jessica Kirson and Andrew Schulz. Pete Davidson, whose father was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, is also scheduled to perform.
Representatives for those comedians did not return requests for comment on Saturday.
The event is the latest push to advance Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030” plan, which was outlined nearly a decade ago by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The plan aims to diversify Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich economy to areas like technology, culture and sports.
Representatives for the Saudi government did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In the past, Saudi officials have said that organizing international entertainment events is part of an effort to expand leisure opportunities for young Saudis — tickets to some of the comedy sets sold out days in advance — and to stimulate tourism spending, rather than an attempt to improve the country’s international reputation.
Maron, who said he had not been asked to perform at the festival, suggested that comedians were being paid by the same person — the crown prince — who the United States said approved the killing of Khashoggi.
“It’s kind of easy for me to take the high road on this one,” Maron added. “Easy to maintain your integrity when no one’s offering to buy it out.”
Gillis, another stand-up comedian, said on “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast,” the show he hosts with Matt McCusker, that he had taken a “principled stand” against the event after organizers offered him a significant amount of money. “You don’t 9/11 your friends,” he said.
Another comedian, Zach Woods, took a satirical approach. “Name one comedian who hasn’t whored themself out to a dictator,” he said on Instagram on Thursday.
Others like Atsuko Okatsuka, Mike Birbiglia and Leslie Liao have said on social media that they turned down offers to appear at the festival over human rights abuses and free speech concerns.
Human Rights Watch, a watchdog group that investigates and reports on abuses around the world, called on participating comedians to use the festival to publicly urge Saudi authorities to free unjustly detained Saudi dissidents, journalists and human rights activists.
“Comedians receiving hefty sums from Saudi authorities shouldn’t be silent on prohibited topics in Saudi like human rights or free speech,” Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a news release. “Everyone performing in Riyadh should use this high-profile opportunity to call for the release of detained Saudi activists.”
Festival organizers in Saudi Arabia appear to be closely watching comedians ahead of their scheduled performances.
The comedian Tim Dillon said recently on his podcast that he was fired from the lineup after he joked about Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record.
“I addressed it in a funny way, and they fired me,” he said, adding, “This is the first time I’ve been fired by people that actually do really bad things.”
Dillon said last month that festival organizers had offered him $375,000 for one show and that others were offered as much as $1.6 million. (The festival has not disclosed the fees it is paying participating comedians.)
“They’re paying me enough money to look the other away,” he said at the time, adding, “I’m being paid a lot of money to not care about what they do in their country.”
Shea, the Human Rights Watch researcher, added that if comedians did not speak out against Saudi Arabia’s abuses, they would risk bolstering the government’s attempts to launder its image.
“This whitewashing comes amid significant increase in repression,” she said, “including a crackdown on free speech, which many of these comedians defend but people in Saudi Arabia are completely denied.”
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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