© Human Rights Watch 2025(Beirut) – The Saudi government is using the Riyadh Comedy Festival 2025 from September 26 to October 9 to deflect attention from its brutal repression of free speech and other pervasive human rights violations, Human Rights Watch said today. Participating comedians, to avoid contributing to laundering the Saudi government’s reputation, should use the comedy festival to publicly urge Saudi authorities to free unjustly detained Saudi dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists. The public statements that many participating Riyadh Comedy Festival comedians have made about the importance of free expression contrasts sharply with the Saudi authorities’ brutal crackdown on any criticism of the government. In February 2024, Saudi authorities executed Abdullah al-Shamri, a Saudi political analyst specializing in Türkiye, based on charges including “threatening the stability and endangering the security” of Saudi Arabia. While the emerging entertainment industry was being lauded internationally, Saudi authorities were simultaneously carrying out waves of arbitrary arrests of dissidents, activists, intellectuals, and royal family members.