The World Cup of Disgrace

It is a disgrace that in this day and age, that the World Cup is hosted by a country that has has lured millions of people from the poorest countries on earth - often under false pretenses - and then forced them into what many call “modern slavery”.  A huge underclass of people work in an autocratic surveillance state, amid an interconnected network of issues that make it almost impossible to escape.   Qatar hosting one of the world's premier sporting events is the most elementary example of “sports-washing”.

"Nations with deep pockets and poor human rights records are undoubtedly aware of how sport has the potential to reshape their international reputation,” says Sacha Deshmukh, Amnesty International’s UK chief executive. “This is the modern playbook. The calculation appears to be that a new investment in sport may bring some temporary criticism, but that this will be outweighed in the longer term by the substantial rebranding benefits.”

The reason that Qatar shocked the world in 2010 was because they didn’t seem to have support or even infrastructure, given Fifa’s own report described their bid as “high risk”. They did have a lot of money, though. Whistleblower Phaeda Almajid has since claimed she was in the rooms as members of Fifa’s executive committee were offered bribes of $1.5m. It has similarly been reported by the Sunday Times that Mohamed bin Hammam, the driver of Qatar’s bid, had used secret slush funds to make payments to senior officials totaling £3.8m. Bin Hammam was banned for life from all Fifa related activities by the ethics committee, although this was later overturned due to lack of evidence, but then reinstated over conflicts of interest.  In April 2020, the United States Department of Justice alleged that three FIFA executives received payments to support Qatar. The FBI’s William F Sweeneystated how “the defendants and their co-conspirators corrupted the governance and business of international soccer with bribes and kickbacks, and engaged in criminal fraudulent schemes”.

Since then, the one issue that has most dominated coverage of Qatar is the report of 6,500 migrant worker deaths first set by The Guardian. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been for years forced to work in searing summer months, which FairSquare describes as a “demonstrable risk” to workers’ lives due to “clear evidence linking heat to worker deaths”, especially when allied to strenuous work.  A report Qatar itself commissioned found workers are “potentially performing their job under significant occupational heat stress” for a third of the year. One in three workers were found to have become hyperthermic at some point.   The country’s list of “occupational diseases” does not include deaths resulting from heat stress.  Instead, Amnesty’s study claims that approximately 70 per cent of migrant worker deaths are reported with terms such as “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”.  The International Labour Organization [ILO] has meanwhile noted there is likely under-reporting of migrant deaths, because companies want to avoid reputation damage or paying compensation.

Qatar is supposed to be welcoming the world, but a lot of the world just doesn’t feel welcome.  “We’re not traveling to this World Cup,” says Di Cunningham of the U.K.'s Three Lions Pride organization. “That’s in spite of the fact we traveled to Russia. There is a toxic environment for LGBTQ and other minority groups.”  Article 296 of Qatar’s penal code specifies that same-sex relations between men is an offence, with a punishment of up to three years in prison. The week before the World Cup saw the latest in a series of alarming statements, with former Qatari international Khalid Salman describing homosexuality as “damage in the mind”. It feeds into a culture that has seen Human Rights Watch report that the Qatar Preventive Security Department forces have arbitrarily arrested LGBTQ people and subjected them to ill-treatment, with six cases of severe and repeated beatings and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022. 

Transgender women had their phones illegally searched, and then had to attend conversion therapy sessions as a requirement of their release.  One transgender woman reported that an officer hit and kicked here while stating “you gays are immoral, so we will be the same to you”.  Another described the Preventive Security as “a mafia” who beat her every day and shaved her hair, while making her take off her shirt to take pictures of her breasts. Thomas Beattie, a former professional footballer who came out in 2020, said, “Awarding the privilege of hosting a global foreign event to nations which embody this mindset is really damaging to my community, especially because you kind of send this message that we’re a secondary thought and we don’t really matter,” he says. “I don’t think I would feel any safer.”

One of many poignant scenes in a documentary called The Workers Cup is when Kenneth, from Ghana, talks of when he was first lured to Qatar. A recruitment agent made the 21-year-old think he would be transferred from a construction job to a professional football club. That didn’t happen.  It should be acknowledged that most workers come of their own accord, since a meager salary in Doha can be transformative in Nepal or Bangladesh. That’s also where the exploitation starts.   There’s a haunting line from another migrant in the documentary, Padam from Nepal.  “When I discovered the reality it was too late.”

That reality, according to Isobel Archer of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), involves illegal recruitment fees amounting to “hundreds, or even thousands of dollars and is one of the worst drivers of abuse in the region”. It has been estimated that Bangladeshi men have paid over $1 billion in fees between 2011 and 2020. 

Since most workers can’t afford this, and need to arrange loans or wage levies, it instantly puts them in debt and, essentially, a financial trap. Their general salary is between $220-350 a month, meaning they can never make enough to free the debt and “leaving them vulnerable to a range of exploitative practices,” according to Michael Posner, director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.  “Since 2016, we have recorded 89 cases of migrant workers paying recruitment fees in Qatar,” Archer adds. “Undoubtedly there are workers looking after football fans and teams this month who toil under the burden of debt.”

In a recent Amnesty report on security workers, many interviewers said they couldn’t remember their last day off, with over 85 per cent saying those days were usually up to 12 hours long. Yet, when one interviewee claimed he tried to take a sick day, he was told he would be docked wages and felt in fear of deportation.  “You are like a programmed computer; you just get used to it. You feel it is normal, but it’s not really normal.  “Denying employees their right to rest through the threat of financial penalty, or compelling them to work when ill, can amount to forced labor under the ILO Convention on Forced Labor. This is one of many descriptions around Qatar that just shouldn’t be used in 2022, let alone for a football tournament.

Professor Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, described “indentured or coercive labor conditions” that recall “the historical reliance on enslaved and coerced labor in the region”. The workers themselves are more blunt. One in The Workers Cup says they “are staying in Qatar against their will”. “Modern slavery”, another interjects. 

There are around two million people in this situation right now, comprising 95 per cent of the Qatari workforce, and mostly coming from East Africa, South and Southeast Asia.  The workers arrive in exorbitant debt and have to hand over their passports, despite laws prohibiting this. All of that ensures companies have total control of their lives, as they travel to what Deshmukh describes as “squalid, overcrowded accommodation with no air-conditioning and exposed to overflowing sewage or uncovered septic tanks”. The workers aren’t allowed leave without permission, which is rare.  To only add to the everyday misery, there are huge fines for mistakes, forced work in searing heat without shelter and many not receiving overtime or not getting paid altogether.  It is then almost impossible to change jobs. 

“The culture and structure of the Qatar state effectively enables the abuse of migrant workers, regardless of legal challenges,” Deshmukh says. “Workers cannot organize to protect their own rights by forming or joining trade unions. They still risk being arrested or deported if their employers cancel their visas, refuse to renew their residence permit or report them as having ‘absconded’. They are living and working in a country where dissent in any form is not tolerated.”

Pay discrimination on the basis of nationality, race and language is reported by more than a third of interviewees in one Amnesty report.  “You may find a Kenyan is earning 1,300 [riyals], but the same security from the Philippines gets 1,500. Tunisians, 1,700,” one security guard says. Pay is according to nationality.”  It goes even deeper. The security guards are always black Africans. Women from the Philippines are preferred as maids. Nepalis, Bangladeshis and Indians form the majority of the workforce in hazardous jobs.  Academics such as John Chalcraft talk of how this is not just intentional, but another insidious form of control. Migrant workers used to come from other Middle Eastern countries, such as Egypt, only for the Gulf elites to find that made it easier for them to band together and discuss problems. Splitting groups by nationalities prevents this.

David Beckham’s face is all over Doha right now, on billboards that look like they’re really maximizing that reported £150m deal. The England star isn’t doing many promotion interviews, though, and it’s hard not to think an obvious question would be whether he feels such money should also go to migrant workers.  That points to one of the most obnoxiously offensive elements of this World Cup. Qatar has more than enough money to equitably reform their labor system, and has had 12 years to start restructuring. The state has instead decided to spend fortunes on public relations, pushing back against criticisms rather than addressing them. This is as base sports-washing as you can get.