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Of the many facts and figures circulating about Qatar’s problems, there is one realization that should stand above them all. It is shameful that, in 2022, a country can host a World Cup where it has lured millions of people from the world’s poorest countries – often under false pretenses – and then forced them into what many call “modern slavery”. And yet this has just been accepted. The World Cup continues, an end product of a structure that is both Orwellian and Kafkaesque. A vast underclass of people work in an authoritarian surveillance state, within an interconnected network of subjects that make escape almost impossible. “It’s all so integrated,” says Michael Page of Human Rights Watch. Many will point to similar problems in the west, but this is not the failure of a system. It is the system, the global inequality that has gone to extremes. “The bottom line is that these human rights violations are not normal for a World Cup host,” says Minky Worden, also of Human Rights Watch. Qatar 2022 has so many concerns that it claims to be the most troubled football tournament ever, perhaps surpassing Argentina in 1978. It’s so bad that when human rights groups went to federations with various sub-points, they were told to find common cause. This led to calls for FIFA to combine the prize money with compensation for migrant workers, but there has been no movement on this yet. A simple appeal to humanity has yet to move the game. This makes it all the more relevant to actually explain everything the world is going through. You can jump to any of the sections below: When Qatar shocked the world by winning their World Cup bid in December 2010, they were “probably the least known Gulf state”, according to FairSquare’s Nick McGeehan. This has changed drastically. Qatar entered the competition to lead an economic diversification program for a post-fossil fuel world, and key to this is presenting the country as a business hub without complex human rights issues. It is the most basic example of “sportswashing”. “It was made in 1936,” says Page, “but now it’s supercharged.” It is also much more sophisticated than simple image enhancement. It’s really about taking over or integrating into the Western infrastructure so that moral control is impossible. Qatar has similarly invested billions in EU countries, completely subduing the usual political criticism. So this World Cup can somehow be held without major changes. (AFP via Getty Images) “As we saw with Saudi Arabia, nations with deep pockets and poor human rights records no doubt know how sport has the potential to reshape their international reputation,” says Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International’s UK chief executive. “This is the modern book. The calculation seems to be that a new investment in sport may bring some temporary criticism, but that this will be offset in the long term by the significant benefits of rebranding.” In that sense, this World Cup will ensure that Qatar are linked with modern-day equivalents of, say, Gordon Banks vs. Brazil. It is a powerful thing. As one source argues, “it’s a lot harder to break into somewhere if they’ve just hosted a World Cup.” This is where the reference to Saudi Arabia is so strong. The World Cup bid came amid an escalating regional rivalry that led to the 2017 Gulf blockade, with Qatar on one side, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on the other. And what happens on Sunday? It was supposed to just be the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Instead, the opening game of the World Cup has been moved, overshadowing everything and highlighting which sport it has been reduced to.
How the bid was won
The reasons Qatar shocked the world in 2010 was because they didn’t seem to have the backing or even the infrastructure, with FIFA’s own report describing their bid as “high risk”. But they had a lot of money. Whistleblower Phaeda Almajid has since claimed she was in the rooms as FIFA executive committee members were offered $1.5 million in bribes. Similarly, it was reported by the Sunday Times that Mohamed bin Hammam, the driver of the Qatar bid, had used secret funds to make payments to senior officials totaling £3.8 million. Bin Hammam was banned for life from all FIFA-related activities by the ethics committee, although this was later overturned due to a lack of evidence, but later reinstated due to a conflict of interest. In April 2020, the United States Department of Justice alleged that three exco members received payments to support Qatar. William F Sweeney Jnr of the FBI stated how “the defendants and their associates corrupted the governance and business of international soccer with bribes and kickbacks and engaged in criminal fraudulent schemes.” The High Commission has long denied the allegations. If there is one issue that has dominated Qatar’s coverage and particularly angered the state, it is The Guardian’s first reporting of 6,500 migrant worker deaths. This anger, to be blunt, is an outrage in itself. The only reason Qatar can dispute the evidence is because of the circular tragic farce that the state simply won’t investigate the deaths. “That’s the scandal,” says McGeehan. “It’s a wrong argument. It’s about proven negligence and the rate of unexplained deaths.” This, according to a 2021 Amnesty International report, amounts to around 70 percent. What can be said with absolute certainty is that the actual number would be shocking, although even the three deaths officially recorded – Zac Cox, Anil Human Pasman and Tej Narayan Tharu – are obviously tragically bad enough. It goes without saying that a sporting event should not involve a single death or any human suffering. And yet, Qatar involves numbers that, statistically, are likely to be much higher. Hundreds of thousands of workers have for years been forced to work in the summer months, which FairSquare describes as a “demonstrable risk” to workers’ lives due to “clear evidence linking heat to worker deaths,” especially when associated with strenuous work. A report commissioned by Qatar itself found that workers “potentially perform their work under significant occupational heat stress” for a third of the year. One in three workers were found to have become hyperthermic at some point. (Getty Images) The country’s list of “occupational diseases” does not include deaths due to heat stress. In contrast, Amnesty’s study claims that around 70 percent of migrant worker deaths are reported with terms such as “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest.” “These are phrases that should not be on a death certificate,” pathologist Dr David Bailey told Amnesty. These phrases also mean that they are not recorded as World Cup-related deaths, as are those outside the stadium ‘footprint’. In addition, Qatar has historically banned autopsies unless a criminal act or pre-existing disease is established. “They haven’t looked into the circumstances where a worker dies in their bed,” Page adds. A recent Daily Mail survey claims that, between 2011 and 2020, 2,823 working-age foreigners died of “unclassified” causes. The International Labor Organization [ILO] Meanwhile, they have noted that there is potential under-reporting because companies want to avoid reputational damage or pay compensation, which starts to cut to the heart of the problem. “They haven’t been pushed hard enough,” says Page “I think there are two factors around the lack of meaningful independent research. One, it wouldn’t make them look good. Second, they are on the hook for compensation. We tried to be careful at HRW, we have told thousands, but we don’t know exactly because of the Qatari authorities. It’s all the more frustrating because their health infrastructure has the ability to measure it. “But they don’t want to release the data that underlines the severity of the problem.” One of the sad ironies of this tournament is that Qatar is supposed to welcome the world, to the global party the competition has become, but a lot of people just don’t feel welcome. “We’re not traveling to this World Cup,” says Di Cunningham of Three Lions Pride. “This despite the fact that we traveled to Russia. There is a toxic environment for LGBTQ and other minority groups.” Article 296 of Qatar’s penal code makes same-sex relations an offence, punishable by up to three years in prison. The death penalty is possible under sharia law, but there are no known records of it being imposed for homosexuality. Qatar has continued to insist that the everyday reality is different and everyone is welcome as long as they respect the culture, but this is simply not enough for LGBTQ groups. “We hear what seems to be this kind of robotic insistence that everything is going to be okay, that we’re going to be safe, that we’re going to be welcome,” Cunningham says. “But there have been no documented plans, no unified messages, no apparent collective will. Actually it was the opposition. We have seen unequivocal public demonization of LGBTQ people by prominent members of the establishment.” The week before the World Cup saw the latest in a series of disturbing statements, with former Qatar international Khalid Salman describing homosexuality as “damage to the mind”. It feeds into a culture that has seen Human Rights Watch report that Qatar’s Department of Preventive Security forces have arbitrarily arrested and mistreated LGBTQ people, with six cases of severe and repeated beatings and five cases of…
