As Saudi Arabia hosts comedians and courts gamers, the silenced voice of Jamal Khashoggi still echoes.
Karen Attiah at The Golden Hour:
Seven years ago today, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi went into a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He was trying to get papers to proceed with marrying his then-fiancée, Hatice Cengiz. He never returned alive. At the time, he was one of my writers for the Global Opinions section at the Washington Post. He was already a famous journalist and writer in Saudi Arabia and the Arab region, But in 2016, he was banned from writing for Saudi papers after criticizing Donald Trump and the burgeoning relationship between Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). In 2017, he broke his silence by speaking out in the Washington Post, and warning of the increasing authoritarian crackdowns in the “modern” Saudi Arabia, saying that the country was not always so repressive— that the conditions for writers, academics, and mild critics such as himself were becoming “unbearable”.
He managed to leave Saudi Arabia and was attempting to build a new life for himself in Virginia. All he wanted to do was write— and writing for the Washington Post, especially when we translated his work into Arabic, meant the world to him, even as he came under great pressure. Instead, he was murdered— and reportedly dismembered by Saudi agents dispatched to Turkey to dispose of him. The CIA determined that the murder was approved by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. This piece about Jamal should have been in the Washington Post. The paper accepted international glory, Pulitzer finalist recognitions, and all manner of accolades for keeping the story of his murder alive in the months after his death. I did my personal and professional best to carry on Jamal’s memory and legacy in the pages of the Washington Post, even after the Global Opinions section, which I founded to be a place for challenged and banned writers around the world, was dismantled in 2023. The Jamal Khashoggi Fellowship, established to give challenged writers a platform in the Washington Post, is no more. The Arabic translations, which Jamal cared so much about— as a way to let Arabic speakers feel seen and heard by the Washington Post, have also stopped. Instead, on the anniversary of Jamal’s murder, I am forced to write this column here, not in the Washington Post, the paper he loved so much. And a paper I was once proud to work for. I was unjustly fired after 11 years, for doing my job, expressing the truth about race and violence in America.
As Jamal found himself forced out of Saudi media, I find myself being forced out of the Washington Post, the very same paper that championed Jamal’s voice while he was alive, and crusaded for global press freedom after his death. But this doesn’t mean the end of Jamal’s legacy. My firing from the Washington Post doesn’t mean I’m done reminding the world of who Khashoggi was and the journalistic values he ended up standing for— and ultimately being killed for.
The dark turn that Jamal warned about in Saudi Arabia, as well as his silencing and murder, should be an alarm bell for us in America, especially for journalists, academics, and writers. Those who think that being quiet and subservient to global authoritarians means they will be safe— well, they should think again. Jamal thought he was safe. He thought being in America would keep him safe. Jamal and I both thought that his working for a high-profile paper like the Washington Post would keep him safe. Maybe I thought I would be institutionally safe. We were wrong. Dead wrong. In violent, authoritarian regimes, no one is safe. When money and power trample values and principles, everyone is at risk. And the truth-tellers are the first casualty.
This piece from Karen Attiah nails it: The Washington Post urinated on the legacy the late Jamal Khashoggi championed by the wrongful firing of Attiah.
