The World interviewed slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Sept. 21, 2017, after he published a column in the Washington Post called “Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable.”
Khashoggi’s column was in reaction to arrests of about 30 critics of the then-newly crowned prince, Mohammad bin Salman. Khashoggi wrote:
Oct. 2 marks one year since Khashoggi’s brutal killing inside of the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. The 59-year-old writer, a prominent critic of the Saudi regime, had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States.
Listen: Carol Hills combines the archive tape of the interview below with reflections from Khashoggi’s colleague and friend, Jordanian journalist Salameh Nematt.
Here’s what he told us in 2017.
Jamal Khashoggi: Hello, Carol.
Jamal Khashoggi, that’s correct.
Sure.
To my American friends, I say Khashoggi. It is actually Khashoggi, but that would be very hard to say. Khashoggi is good.
Alright.
A number of things. I was very much hopeful for a change in Saudi Arabia with the rise to power of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a very dynamic, eager prince. I think he saved Saudi Arabia from slow death by putting ahead issues of oil dependency and the need for reform and stopping waste in government spending.
Yes.
Yes. I was hoping for Saudi Arabia to continue in the direction of reform — OK, I need to start all over again.
OK.
A number of things: Arrests, mass arrests which we never witnessed before. A campaign, a hate campaign, intimidation against writers, intellectuals. No tolerance even for silent critics or silent people. That prompted me to say something, because this is not the direction I was hoping my country to take, particularly with the rise to power of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was received warmly by most Saudis. The majority of Saudis are young. I see that he saved Saudi Arabia from slow death, the direction of overspending and overbudgeting unnecessarily projects.
It is just this intolerance that is totally unneeded. He doesn’t have opposition. People are willing to support his reform plans, and these reform plans are going to be painful, because they’re going to address economic matters, unemployment. And that requires unity, not division. But what we have right now is division. Saudis targeting other Saudis. Saudis hating other Saudis.
That is not a recipe for the future.
Look, he’s in charge. He’s in charge. He can stop it. I’m not saying he’s behind it, but I’m saying that he can stop it.
This intimidation, the bashing of critics, allowing the media to go after independent Saudis, is totally unprecedented.
Like we have now … the government has what they call an electronic army that bash other Saudis. The right hand of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Mr. Saoud Al-Qahtani, called for Saudis to tell on each other. He created a blacklist, and he asked Saudis to report any other Saudi whom they see as unloyal to the country.
No. Again, I’m not saying Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is doing that. No, it’s not him. It’s not him. But this is happening under his watch. It is not him who’s spying. It is not him who is intimidating. But this is happening under his watch and he — and I urge him to stop it. He needs to stop that.
Many, many Saudis are affected by it. Saudis who are going silent, Saudis who were arrested. Saudis who chose to stay out of the country.
Yes. It led to jailing people. There are more than 30 or 40 Saudis who were jailed for either being silent or being critic of government policies. Many of them I know personally, are friends. Writers –
OK.
Yes, that has been allowed. That has been encouraged. Now, right, a personal note. It is about six articles that were published in today’s newspapers in Saudi Arabia attacking me. That’s too much. You don’t devote newspapers, national papers, to attack a critic of the government or a critic of a certain policy. I don’t see myself as opposition, and I don’t want to be. But that is a sample of the things that is happening not only to me. Too many. …
Too many Saudis are being attacked and bashed by the Saudi newspapers.
Yes, totally new things. And it hasn’t been happening in the last … as long as I know Saudi Arabia. I’ve been in the business of journalism for the last 30 years. There were a list of Saudi intellectuals but we were never told to bash intellectuals who were arrested. We just were silent about it. We knew of them. Some of them could be our colleagues. We would feel sorry.
And I wrote that in my article, it was very painful when one of us get arrested but we will never go and bash them in the newspaper. Now they are doing that, and that is shameful.
Unfortunately, this is happening. It is not healthy. It will divide the society.
Oh, like he wants to push for economic reform, open up the country, allow young people to enjoy entertainment, curb radicalism. We support him in all of that. But we should not move from one inclusive policy to another. We are fed up with religious rigidness. To be, to suffer under, what, liberal rigidness? It’s not fair.
Yes. What what we need is it is more opening that allow everybody to enjoy and express his views, whether he’s religious or he’s liberal or carrier of any other views. But to push the country into one direction, one point of view, label independent as traitors of the country. That is so [undeciperhable], not right.
He has the total support of the American administration. This is good. It is healthy for Saudi Arabia. It will help him guide Saudi Arabia into reform. But in the same time, I wish the administration would remind the leadership in Saudi Arabia of tolerance and [that] oppression is not healthy, it will not help his reform, and as I said earlier, this reform is going to be painful, and it requires a unity of the people around the prince.
Well, I don’t want, as a Saudi Arabian citizen, to see Yemen under the hegemony of Iran. But at the same time, this war has to stop. And the only way out is to wish for a peaceful solution that creates a power share in Yemen. The Yemenis need to learn how to, learn how to create a formula where all parties in Yemen live in the same Yemen and become democratic Yemen. That is the solution out. No one can impose his rule in Yemen, not Saudi Arabia, not Iran, and not a single party in Yemen. Has to be a multi-party system, a power-sharing system must prevail in Yemen to end this misery.
No, it is not. It is not. And not even helping our own safety and security in Saudi Arabia because the Houthi are still also bombing, every once in a while, Saudi Arabia. So we need all to go back to that negotiating table and push for a power-sharing formula in Yemen. That is the only way out.
No. In principle, I can. But, of course, I will risk being arrested or being banned from travel and that will be very suffocating. And actually, last week, a friend of mine whom I met in Washington and an independent Saudi, I wrote about him in my article, Essam Al-Zamil, and he flew back to Saudi Arabia, where he was arrested. If Essam, who is very independent, who is not linked to any political organization, is arrested, I’m sure I’m gonna be arrested as well.
No. No. No one had been released from the list of people who had arrested recently. None I know of.
It hasn’t been no more than two weeks, so far, about 10 days.
Because I’m free here, and I will feel very much bad, very much guilty, if I continue enjoying my life being silent when I can speak. When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had a reason and I felt very shameful about it when I learned of the arrest of my friends and not being able to say something. Which I couldn’t bear that when I am free and I can speak here.
Yes, I have family, but I’m not worried for my family. And we don’t have this ugly practice of targeting a family. No, Saudi Arabia, it is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a republic of fear. No, they will not touch my family or banish them. That is, that is the practice I know of in Saudi Arabia all my life.
I really don’t have a good answer for that, because it is totally unneeded. And none of those guys was willing to oppose his views and even if they were, he enjoys an absolute power, and he can conduct his reform with or without the blessing of anyone. I don’t have a good answer. It is totally unneeded. Is it all about Qatar? Because many of those — or most of the arrested — they took either a silent position or opposed the crisis that we call the Qatari crisis. I don’t know. It is totally unneeded, but it was being built up for the last two years. There have been writing in local Saudi papers, by journalists who are close to the government, calling for the eradication of Islamists in Saudi Arabia. And that, as if we are going down the road of Egypt.
And this, this is very difficult for Saudi Arabia. Because how do you identify an Islamist in a very Islamic country?
Thank you very much.
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