'Their claim to support artistic freedom means nothing'

Netflix has been slammed for dropping a show in which a comedian criticised the Saudi regime over the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

The streaming giant pulled an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s stand-up show Patriot Act which mocked the kingdom’s version of how the journalist came to die in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.

Global campaign group Human Rights Watch said:  ‘Every artist whose work appears on Netflix should be outraged that the company has agreed to censor a comedy show because the thin-skinned royals in Saudi complained about it.’

In the episode that has been pulled from the service in Saudi Arabia, Minhaj said: ‘The Saudis were struggling to explain his disappearance: they said he left the consulate safely, then they used a body double to make it seem like he was alive/

‘At one point they were saying he died in a fist fight, Jackie Chan-style. They went through so many explanations. The only one they didn’t say was that Khashoggi died in a free solo rock-climbing accident.’

The comic, who is Muslim, also criticised crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman  and the Saudi bombing of Yemen, causing a humanitarian catastrophe. 

Netflix told the Financial Times it withdraw the episode after it being told in breached a law prohibiting the online distribution of ‘material impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy’.

The company said it received a ‘valid’ request which it had to follow to ‘comply with local law’. Such offences under Saudi’s anti-cybercrime legislation carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison and/ora £630,000 fine.

But Human Rights Watch said: ‘Netflix’s claim to support artistic freedom means nothing if it bows to demands of government officials who believe in no freedom for their citizens – not artistic, not political, not comedic.’

Saudi has been ranked 169th out of 180 countries for press freedom, and in 2017 the UN special rapporteur on human rights accused its regime of using anti-terror laws to suppress free expression.

Ben Emmerson QC said the kingdom’s laws ‘enable the criminalisation of a wide spectrum of acts of peaceful expression, which are viewed by the authorities as endangering "national unity" or undermining "the reputation or position of the state".’

Here is the full routine Crown Prince Mohammad doesn’t want his people to see:

Published: 1 Jan 2019