Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival: nothing to laugh at

You’re seeing something strange in Riyadh: comedians telling jokes. The posters are up, and the message from the Kingdom is clear: look how fun and open we are now. Mohammed bin Salman wants you to see a nation laughing, and to believe he is the one who set it free.

But I know the truth. I know that in this new, “reformed” Saudi Arabia, the most dangerous thing you can be is a comedian who actually tells the truth.

My crime was satire. From my home in London, I used comedy to poke fun at the crown prince and the absurdities of his rule. The response was a full-scale campaign of transnational repression.

As recently as 2024, we learned just how far MBS would go to silence a critic. The crown prince personally lobbied Lord David Cameron, former UK prime minister and then foreign minister, during a high-level meeting in Riyadh. He did not merely express displeasure; he specifically “pressed for the UK to halt a legal case” I had brought against the Saudi state over its campaign of harassment against me. To make his demand unmistakable, he explicitly “warned that UK interests would be damaged if the case was allowed to proceed”.

Let that sink in. The de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia did not just ask; he threatened a senior British minister. He demanded that the UK government trample its own independent judiciary and abandon the rule of law to serve his personal vendetta against a satirist. When a comedian’s jokes are such a threat that a prince must threaten a foreign power to stop them, it reveals the staggering fragility of his regime.

This is the real state of comedy in Saudi Arabia. The Riyadh Comedy Festival isn’t a celebration of free expression; it’s a carefully staged performance where the only unwritten rule is the most important one: thou shalt not mock MBS.

The comedians on that stage are performing in a gilded cage. They can joke about traffic, perhaps, or annoying family members. But the royal family, the war in Yemen, the imprisonment of activists, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi — these topics are utterly forbidden. The most powerful censor won’t be a government agent in the front row; it will be the fear in every performer’s mind. They know the consequences. They have seen how the state treats its critics.

What the regime is selling with this festival is a lie wrapped in a laugh track. It is a public relations campaign designed to make the world forget about the activists in prison, the dissidents they have murdered, and the exiles like me they continue to hunt. They want you to see a land of laughter, so you stop listening to the screams.

True comedy is subversive. It speaks truth to power. It punctures the egos of the arrogant and gives a voice to the voiceless. A state that cannot tolerate a joke is a state that is deeply insecure and fundamentally weak.

So, as the world sees headlines about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, I ask you to look past the glitter. Remember my story. Remember that for simply telling jokes, the crown prince himself tried to strong-arm a foreign government into abandoning its own laws. In MBS’s Saudi Arabia, the punchline is always prison.