Human Rights Watch Can’t Accept Riyadh Comedy Money Festival

Aziz Ansari.
Photo: Cattermole Gareth/Getty Images for IMDB

COMEDIANS LOOKING TO DONATE Their Fee from the Riyadh Comedy Festival, Look Elsewhere. A spokesperson for Human Rights Watch Told Variety IT “Cannot Accept” Money from Comedians who have “geneerously offend to donate part of their performance fees.” Acciting to Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch’s Head of Economic Justice and Rights Division, Taking Money From People Who Took Money from the Government of Saudi Arabia Could “Create the Conception That SomeHow We Compromised Our Independence AFTER the fact.”

Whose Check is Getting Sent Back? Definitely Aziz Ansari, Who Said On Jimmy Kimmel Live! On October 7 that he’d be donatting part of his his appeararance fee to human rights Watch (Alongside Reporters with Borders). Jessica Kirson Also Said She’d Donate Her Fee to a human-reights org but never said whic one.

HRW’s Saudi Arabia Researcher, Joey Shea, Said that while the Organization Can’t Take the Comics’ Money, “It is not too too. It is simillar to what shea said before the festival, urging performers to “use this high-profile opportunity.”