Qatar Drained 6,500 Workers to Death
More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago - The Guardian
Qatar is a tiny but super-wealthy country in the Arab Gulf with a GDP worth 183.47 billion US dollars (2019)[1] and a population of 2.8 million inhabitants. In 2014, the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence accused Qatar of sheltering and hosting international blacklisted jihadi moneymen like Jarallah al-Marri. Soon after, the country was accused by Trump of financing terrorism, which spark a diplomatic crisis in 2017 between Qatar and the rest of the middle east[2].
Today, Qatar's international image is discredited because of its circulation in terrorism and violence domestically and globally. Therefore, the country is spending a huge amount of its petrol-based wealth on beautifying its image. One of its tactics is hosting international events.
Qatar will host FIFA World Cup 2022, the greatest football demonstration of all time. Unsurprisingly, securing the honor to host the tournament was not entirely legitimate. In 2020, the US justice department accused Qatar of bribing FIFA officials to vote in favor of rewarding the Arab country the 2022 World Cup. The accusation is related to the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal, which toppled the institution's president Sepp Blatter[3].
Organizing the tournament will not gain Qatar any considerable instant results. Instead, it will improve their image for the long term. Qatar is eager to sell an industrialized image of a peaceful and welcoming state. A hybrid version of Cool Japan strategy[4]. Yet, while Japan has completely changed from a Nazi nation to a great liberal country, Qatar is clinging to its violent and bloody nature.
Home of two giant media platforms that spread anger, pan-Islamism, homophobia, misinformation, and imperial Arabization in the MENA region (Aljazeera and Bein Sports). Accused of funding extremist groups and bribing high football officials. Restricting freedom of speech (Qatar has arrested Muhammad ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami for writing a poem)[5]. Oppressing women and sexual minorities. And the worst is yet to come.
Eight months ago, The Guardian published a controversial article entitled "6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded"[6]. The author commenced the shocking article with the following sentence, "More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago."
About the number of deaths, the author states,
The total death toll is significantly higher, as these figures do not include deaths from a number of countries which send large numbers of workers to Qatar, including the Philippines and Kenya. Deaths that occurred in the final months of 2020 are also not included.
Qatar has proven that nothing can stop it from organizing the tournament. It has an ambitious vision of a megaproject that includes seven stadiums, an airport, dozens of major programs, roads, public transport system, and even a whole new city.
To make this vision come true, Qatar needed millions of workers. According to Human Rights Watch (2013),
More than 1.2 million migrant workers - mostly from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, and Bangladesh - live and work in Qatar, and that number is increasing rapidly. The country may recruit up to a million additional workers in the next decade to overhaul its infrastructure and build the stadiums required to host the 2022 World Cup.[7]
Under these circumstances, Qatar has committed severe violations of worker rights. Amnesty, which calls the tournament Qatar world cup of shame, has published many shocking facts about the miserable conditions of working in Qatar. Migrant workers stayed unpaid for months[8]. Employers threaten their employees when they attempt to change their jobs. Mark Dummett, the human rights organization's global issues program director, said that authorities are leaving thousands of workers at the risk of exploitation by unscrupulous employers. He adds, "They have little hope of remedy, compensation, or justice. After the World Cup, the fate of the workers who remain in Qatar will be even more uncertain."[9]
Qatar labor abuses do not stop here. Reality Check 2021 is a 48-page report about the state of migrant workers' rights in Qatar, published two days ago by Amnesty. The report reveals the reality behind Qatar's legal reforms concerning immigrant workers. These reforms, according to Amnesty, have no effect.
In the report's conclusion, Amnesty states,
Despite warnings from Amnesty International and other organizations about the need to take serious action against abusive employers, the government continues to fail to hold perpetrators to account. On the contrary, abusive employers feel empowered by the government's lack of action.
In other words, even the legal reforms that Qatar marketed to the international community after pressure from various organizations and authorities, including FIFA, are empty.
6,500 workers died to beautify Qatar's image. Or at least, this is the number we know; the hidden is more immense. This number is gigantic if we compare it with the number of workers who died during constructing other megaprojects. For instance, three workers died during the construction of Burj Khalifa and Lotte World Tower, 11 died while building the Golden Gate Bridge, about 27 died during the erection of Brooklyn Bridge, and nobody died while structuring Eiffel Tower or Lakhta Center. On the whole, 44 is the number of workers who died during the construction of these six megaprojects combined.
The number looks more alarming and anomalous when we compare it with the previous FIFA World Cup tournaments. To illustrate, 21 workers died during the construction of stadiums that hosted FIFA WC 2018 in Russia[10], and eight died during the construction of 12 venues scheduled to host FIFA WC 2014 in Brazil[11]. On the whole, 33 workers died in two previous tournaments of FIFA WC combined.
The two previous paragraphs give us a notion about the terrible number of people who died in the Qatar massacre. Are we still talking about constructions? Is that a war? Does the organization of a sports tournament deserve all this bloodshed? You decide how to answer these questions!
The international community reaction varied from an organization to another. Human rights institutions like Amnesty and HRW urged the international authorities to take action and stop the bloodshed in Qatar. Many football federations and associations joined the campaign too. The Nordic countries are always in the frontline, especially Sweden. The Swedish national team withdrew from the Qatar training camp in September, while the Swedish football clubs signed an Amnesty International protest demanding the governing body to stand up for the rights of migrant workers in Qatar.
Call for action.
It is our duty to be the voice of the oppressed workers in the state of slavery. Are you a journalist, video maker, blogger, graphic designer, artist, public figure, human rights activist…? Do your investigation about this massacre, and educate your entourage! A simple article, image, or video can change this situation. Let us be the voice of the families that lost 6500 daughters and sons.
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[2] President Trump Accuses Qatar Of Funding Terrorism (forces.net)
[3] US accuses Qatar of bribing FIFA officials to host 2022 World Cup | MEO (middle-east-online.com)
[5] World Report 2013: World Report 2013: Qatar | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)
[7] World Report 2013: World Report 2013: Qatar | Human Rights Watch (hrw.org)
[10] 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia: In Memory of 21 Killed Workers |BWI Home (bwint.org)
[11] Timeline of deaths, accidents at Brazil's World Cup stadiums | Reuters
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