1 Oct 2025 | Middle East and North Africa, News, Saudi Arabia
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.
29 Sep 2025 | News
Are you our new editor?
Index is on the hunt for a new editor to work at the heart of our editorial team. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will be expected to lead agenda-setting essays, columns, features and investigations. This is an excellent opportunity to help curate an outstanding and award-winning quarterly magazine both in print and online. As such, the right candidate will have ample experience and exceptional journalistic judgement. You will be confident working with some of the biggest names in journalism and the arts, as well as committed to finding and commissioning underrepresented voices and stories. A non-tribal outlook is essential: Index is non-partisan and its only “cause” is that of promoting free expression, which we do across the political spectrum.
The right candidate will combine impressive range and curiosity with excellent attention to detail. You will oversee the editorial process from conception through to publication. In so doing you will manage a team of internal editors and writers and a larger network of freelance contributors around the world, alongside sub-editors, illustrators and designers.
The new editor must be equally at home working on print and digital-only journalism. The role demands someone who is just as comfortable writing a grabbing web headline as they are editing a 2,000-word essay. Writing opportunities are also available.
About Index:
Index on Censorship is Britain’s leading organisation that campaigns for, reports on and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate and monitor threats to free speech. Our work is varied and always rewarding. On any given we will be publishing letters written by Belarus political prisoners and defending a cartoonist who might have caused offense – all to make the case that freedom of expression is vital for democracy and for a vibrant and creative society.
At the organisation’s heart and in circulation since 1972 is an award-winning quarterly magazine that has featured some of the world’s best-known writers. In addition to the magazine is a website, a weekly newsletter, a policy arm and an events programme. Together they make Index what it is today – the go-to for information on the global free speech landscape.
Core responsibilities:
- Plan and develop the content strategy for the magazine, which is produced quarterly
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- Keep abreast of freedom of expression policy, research and news issues across political, scientific and cultural areas at an international level
- Manage the editorial team, providing clear strategic leadership
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- Represent Index in the broadcast and print media and at Index-run events
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- Write for the Index website and where relevant for the magazine, including editorials
- Contribute to Index’s overarching strategic development and strategy implementation in collaboration with other senior managers and the CEO
Essential expertise:
- At least five years’ experience in an editing role, ideally at a mid to senior level
- Demonstrated ability to produce high-level, engaging content
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Bonus expertise:
- Expertise in a foreign language and/or a global area
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Hours: Full-time, contract.
Salary: £47,000-52,000 dependent on experience
Location: Remote but with regular travel to London
Index is a small and ambitious organisation that values diversity. We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome all applicants regardless of ethnic origin, national origin, gender, gender identity, race, colour, religious beliefs, disability, sexual orientation, age or marital status.
To apply please send a cover letter with your CV by Friday 31st October 2025 to [email protected]
29 Sep 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, China, Egypt, Europe and Central Asia, In the News, India, Iran, Middle East and North Africa, News, Newsletters, Russia, United Kingdom, United States
If you want to take the temperature of a nation in terms of free speech just look at how it treats its comedians. Countries with robust human rights records can take a joke, the reverse is the case for dictatorships. Comedy “masquerades as folly, but it can take down an empire” wrote Shalom Auslander in a recent issue of our magazine to explain why joke tellers are so often targets. Which of course brings us to Donald Trump and Jimmy Kimmel. The story gripped us all and exposed both Trump’s thin-skin and the role corporations play today in censorship. Bassem Youssef, an Egyptian-American satirist who had to stop his show in Egypt following significant pressure, responded to the suspension of Kimmel with a quip on X: “My Fellow American Citizens. Welcome to my world.”
Fortunately, the USA is not el-Sisi’s Egypt – yet. Kimmel is now back on air after a public outcry and cancellations of subscriptions to Disney’s streaming services. Turns out, the dollar speaks both ways. Meanwhile, a statue of Trump holding hands with Jeffrey Epstein appeared in Washington this week. The bronze-painted installation, titled Best Friends Forever, depicted the two men smiling at each other. The statue made its point, though not for long. The team behind the statue, called The Secret Handshake, had apparently been granted a permit to have it remain there until Sunday evening. It didn’t last a day.
The UK is struggling with humour too. Last month, Banksy’s mural of a protester being beaten by a judge was wiped from the Royal Courts of Justice almost before the paint dried. Officials cited the building’s listed status, but the speed was telling. In a separate incident a protester holding a Private Eye cartoon was arrested at a Palestine solidarity march in July, satire clearly lost on the police.
It’s worse elsewhere. In Iran, Zeinab Mousavi, one of the first Iranian women to do stand-up comedy, is a frequent target of the authorities. Last month she was charged with making statements that were “contrary to public morality”. In China, a joke about the military led to a comedian being arrested, and the company behind him being fined millions. It was a similar story in India, after a popular comedian, Kunal Kamra, was accused of insulting a local politician. Kamra is just the latest comedian to be targeted, as highlighted by Index.
Reflecting on Kimmel, Russian journalist and dissident Andrei Soldatov offered a warning. Shortly after Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, armed operatives raided the offices of NTV, the network that aired Kukly, a puppet show taking aim at Putin. NTV owner Vladimir Gusinsky was jailed and Kukly disappeared shortly after. Soldatov said at the time many Russian journalists and intellectuals rationalised the attack. A few spoke out though. “You can’t make friends with a crocodile” they said. US executives would be wise to remember this.
26 Sep 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, China, Europe and Central Asia, European Union, Israel, Middle East and North Africa, News, Palestine, United Kingdom, United States
Bombarded with news from all angles every day, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at the designation of Antifa as domestic terrorists and the indictment of James Comey.
Australian horror movie edited to make a gay couple straight
An Australian company behind the new horror film Together, pulled it from cinemas in China this week. This followed the discovery of unauthorised changes made by the Chinese distributor which had edited a scene from a gay wedding to make the couple appear heterosexual.
Together, starring James Franco and Alison Brie, is distributed by Neon who released a statement on the edits: “Neon does not approve of Hishow’s unauthorised edit of the film and have demanded they cease distributing this altered version.”
Guidelines released by China’s top media regulator in 2016 banned depictions of homosexuality from TV in the country. In the past, the ban would have meant sections of an offending movie or documentary would have been edited out as happened with the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody. However AI technology has allowed scenes to be altered instead.
In the case of Together an AI-generated woman replaced the man depicted in the original and so a gay wedding became a straight one.
Trump signs order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organisation
US President Donald Trump signed an order on Monday designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organisation following the death of podcaster Charlie Kirk.
An article released by the White House refers to an alleged “trend of Radical Left violence that has permeated the nation in recent years” and provides a list of supposed “Antifa” attacks. This included the assertion that Kirk was “assassinated by a Radical Left terrorist” which many people dispute, as there is little proof the shooter had any political affiliation or that there was a greater conspiracy.
Antifa gets its name from compacting the term “anti-facist” and has its roots in 1920s and 1930s Europe, where groups formed to push back against growing fascist movements.
Concerns have been raised regarding the legality of such an order, or even how such an order should be carried out, with Antifa not really being an organisation at all in the USA, just a loosely connected network of protest groups. Seth G. Jones from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote in 2020 after Trump had suggested a similar move: “While President Trump raised the possibility of designating Antifa as a terrorist organization, such a move would be problematic. It would trigger serious First Amendment challenges and raise numerous questions about what criteria should be used to designate far-right, far-left, and other extremist groups in the United States. In addition, Antifa is not a “group” per se, but rather a decentralised network of individuals. Consequently, it is unlikely that designating Antifa as a terrorist organisation would even have much of an impact.”
BBC releases short film calling for Gaza access
A short film premiered on Wednesday and launched by the BBC, AFP, AP and Reuters called for international journalists to be allowed into Gaza.
Independent reporters have been refused entry to the strip since the 7 October attacks on Israel, leading to repeated calls for access from foreign press and governments.
In a statement Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News, said: “As journalists, we record the first draft of history. But in this conflict, reporting is falling solely to a small number of Palestinian journalists, who are paying a terrible cost.
“It is almost two years since October 7th when the world witnessed Hamas’ atrocities. Since then, a war has been raging in Gaza but international journalists are not allowed in. We must now be let into Gaza. To work alongside local journalists, so we can all bring the facts to the world.”
You can watch the short film here.
Chinese Journalist Zhang Zhan jailed for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”
Chinese lawyer and journalist Zhang Zhan has been sentenced to four years imprisonment for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.
Zhan was jailed in 2020 for reporting on the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan through her YouTube and Twitter (now X) accounts and is just one of many writers and journalists currently imprisoned in China.
Released in May 2024 she was arrested again by police three months later whilst travelling to report on the arrest of an activist in the province of Gansu.
Concerns are mounting over Zhan’s health after she has reportedly gone on repeated hunger strikes to protest her arrest.
Ex-FBI director James Comey indicted on two charges
Ex-director of the FBI James Comey has been indicted on two charges by a Virginia court this week.
Comey has been charged with one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice according to the indictment.
Comey was appointed FBI director in 2013 by then President Barack Obama and served in this role until his firing in 2017 by President Donald Trump, during an investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.
In 2020 Comey faced a congressional hearing where he defended the investigation, stating: “In the main, it was done by the book, it was appropriate and it was essential that it be done, there were parts of it that were concerning.”
It is at this hearing that Comey is accused of knowingly lying to congress whilst being questioned about the FBI’s handling of both the Russia investigation and an investigation into a private email server used by Hilary Clinton.
Comey’s trial is notably being held in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, known as the espionage court, and famously host to cases such as that of Edward Snowden, and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou.
