Something wicked this way comes: Qatar World Cup

October 28, 2022 7:56 AM

The World Cup is the world’s most-watched sports event, with the last one held in Russia in 2018 attracting 3.6 billion television and online viewers. The next World Cup begins in Qatar on 20 November. As noted by Sky News: Qatar won the bid for the 2022 Men's World Cup over the USA by 14 votes to eight. But given the country's strict Islamic laws, its questionable human rights record, and searing temperatures, there were immediate corruption concerns over the decision. Soon after, FIFA commissioned its own investigation into Qatar's methods, which found "no evidence of any improper activity by the bid team".

FIFA would be football's world governing body, the same FIFA that has been engulfed by claims of widespread corruption for decades. The problems with the next World Cup go far beyond any FIFA scandals, however (archive link).

Nine years ago, Guardian journalist Pete Pattisson reported on Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'. In 2013, the International Trade Union Confederation estimated that Qatar World Cup construction would leave 4,000 migrant workers dead. (See The cost of staging a modern World Cup, previously posted on the blue in 2014.)

Instead, 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," according to an analysis by The Guardian in 2021. Amnesty calls it the World Cup of Shame because of the many ways that migrant (and, perhaps, slave) labor has been exploited to build a new stadium for the event. Human Rights Watch notes that FIFA will get billions in revenues from this World Cup. (Emphasis mine.)

In response to criticism over the years, Qatar supposedly made reforms. "Qatar’s two flagship labour reforms are the introduction of a minimum wage and the abolition of the kafala system. The first is a scandal, the second largely a failure," according to Pattisson. In September, Denmark announced that its team "will wear shirts at the World Cup that criticise the human rights record of the host nation Qatar, with a black option unveiled to honour migrant workers who died during construction work for the finals tournament. 'The colour of mourning,' the kit manufacturer Hummel said in a post on Instagram releasing the black third-choice design. 'While we support the Danish national team all the way, this shouldn’t be confused with support for a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives.'”

Officials of various cities, including Paris and London, have announced that they will boycott the World Cup by not setting up the usual fan zones that allow the public to watch the matches outside on giant screens. "Former Manchester United and France striker Eric Cantona vowed to boycott the tournament," according to France 24. " Personally, I will not watch it,' the football legend told the Daily Mail. 'It’s only about money and the way they treated the people who built the stadiums, it’s horrible. And thousands of people died. And yet we will celebrate this World Cup.' "

Earlier this week, "British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that LGBT fans should 'be respectful' and show 'flex and compromise' in Qatar for the upcoming men’s World Cup, prompting sharp criticism from U.K. media, lawmakers and the prime minister’s office," according to the Washington Post (archive version).

Yesterday, Australia's national team released a video that acknowledged progress while speaking out about the nation's record on human rights and same-sex relationships–but the team still plans to play in the World Cup. Meanwhile ...

... "AP’s reporting in the past year has detailed how [a former CIA agent] and his company, Global Risk Advisors, sought to help Qatar host the 2022 World Cup by spying on soccer officials in rival countries. That included deploying a Facebook 'honeypot' in which an attractive woman is used to lure a target, having someone pose as a photojournalist to keep tabs on one nation’s bid and, after the decision was announced in 2010, waging a failed two-year campaign to get a top German soccer official to soften his criticism of Qatar."

Qatar has been hit by an "unprecedented campaign" of criticism over preparations for the football World Cup, its ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said Tuesday, slamming international scrutiny of the Gulf state's human rights record. Those unfamiliar with Qatar, the first country in the Middle East to be chosen as host for a World Cup, may not be aware of its open hostility to LGBTQ+ people, women and women, foreign workers, and others. As we know, that does not make Qatar unique–but it does make it a controversial host for the World Cup.

posted by Bella Donna (39 comments total)

Perhaps if Qatar had violated the human rights of a million Iraqis by murdering them with bombs they might have lost out to the U.S.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:14 AM on October 28, 2022 [6 favorites]

Great post, thank you. Here's something else: all visitors to Qatar must install two apps, one for ticketing and the "Ehteraz" app for COVID-19 tracking.

And security experts are warning that Ehteraz "will be like giving the World Cup country's authorities the key to your house."
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:17 AM on October 28, 2022 [8 favorites]

hot take: changing your jersey to "protest" while still playing is the moral equivalent of a lithium mining company doing a land acknowledgement.
posted by Dr. Twist at 8:20 AM on October 28, 2022 [33 favorites]

How many people are expected to travel to Qatar for the cup?
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:32 AM on October 28, 2022

That is an amazing post! Thanks. And right up to the weekend, so one has a chance of reading some of the links.
posted by mumimor at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2022 [6 favorites]

"Speaking out" while continuing to be profitably involved and definitely not changing anything is pretty much the FIFA-verse in a nutshell.
posted by aramaic at 8:46 AM on October 28, 2022 [15 favorites]

Isn’t this the last World Cup location that was decided before major changes and investigations at FIFA?
posted by The River Ivel at 8:48 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Qatar World Cup construction would leave 4,000 migrant workers dead.

Or as Deadspin (under the previous management) memorably rephrased it: "Qatar's World Cup Expected To Kill More People Than 9/11"
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:50 AM on October 28, 2022 [20 favorites]

Marc Owen Jones @marcowenjones
1/ One of the most pervasive and re-occurring pieces of #disinformation about the Qatar has been the figure that 6500 migrant works have died in connection with the World Cup. I wanted to do a thread on how this piece of news has been transmitted on Twitter over the past year
2/ The figure 6,500 comes from @guardian
- a usually reputable British publication. The original Guardian headline heavily implied 6,500 deaths were connected to World Cup. According to my analysis, this has been the MOST RETWEETED article about the Qatar world cup in English
3/ The Guardian later amended the headline to make it clear the figure of deaths was over a ten-year period. Nonetheless, the original allusion still stood - with the headline still heavily implying the deaths were anomalous and connected to the World Cup.
4/ The 6,500 figure actually refers to all deaths of migrant workers from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, regardless of cause. It's not an 'excess' death figure. An equivalent 'spin; would be "100,000 dead as COVID rampages through UK" to be clarified that only
5/ say, 0.1% of those deaths were actually from Covid. In disinformation terms this falls under either 'misleading content', 'false connection' or 'false context'. Selective use of statistics in particular are prone to misuse >

[click through for more analysis]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 9:00 AM on October 28, 2022 [15 favorites]

I listened to the first three episodes of the World Corrupt podcast (limited six episode series podcast about this World Cup in Qatar with Men in Blazers’ Roger Bennett and Pod Save America / Pod Save the World’s Tommy Vietor) last weekend. It's really good and has some great interviews.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 9:06 AM on October 28, 2022 [6 favorites]

Soon after, FIFA commissioned its own investigation into Qatar's methods, which found "no evidence of any improper activity by the bid team".

Only the finest example of "We have investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong. It would be nice, for once, to have a big sporting org that wasn't horribly corrupt and awful, but that's a hard ask with the amount of $$ and fame on the line. (see FIFA, IOC, NCAA, NFL, MLB, LIV Golf, "the SuperLeague",etc, etc, etc)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:16 AM on October 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

The Tragic Absurdity of Qatar’s World Cup Sportswashing by Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff (June 2022, The Nation):

Approximately three dozen people have passed away while working directly on World Cup construction.

Jaw-dropping as that is, the exploitation goes further. Human Rights Watch asserts that thousands upon thousands of migrant workers experienced grave labor abuses while helping Qatar prepare for the World Cup, and they have not yet received financial compensation. When FIFA President Gianni Infantino was asked whether he was doing anything to help the families of exploited migrant workers, he chose to minimize their misery, stating, “When you give work to somebody, even in hard conditions, you give him dignity and pride. It’s not charity.”

Then there is LGBTQ safety and security. This month FIFA festooned its Twitter avatar in the colors of the rainbow to mark Pride, congratulating itself for its “celebration for the LGBTQIA+ community.” But platitudes can’t erase the fact that the two most recent hosts of the men’s World Cup—Russia and Qatar—have horrific human-rights records when it comes to LGBTQ issues.

posted by spamandkimchi at 9:19 AM on October 28, 2022 [8 favorites]

And the greenwashing (also from Zirin and Boykoff)!!

When FIFA claimed that Qatar would host the first-ever carbon-neutral World Cup, the global guffaw nearly registered on the Richter scale. The environmental group Carbon Market Watch responded that only “creative accounting” that ignored massive sources of carbon—like the energy required to cool the stadiums—could lead to that misleading conclusion. Soccer scholar Brenda Elsey joked on the feminist sports podcast Burn It All Down that soccer barons must have been using their “magical FIFA abacus” to arrive at their carbon-neutrality claim.

posted by spamandkimchi at 9:21 AM on October 28, 2022 [9 favorites]

So wait after reading that thread about the "misinformation" of the Guardian headline of 6.5k deaths of migrant worker is… that's ok, bc it's about what you'd expect if they *didn't* build all the World Cup stuff? Not sure I buy that claim, but even if I did, definitely sure that number is indicative of widespread abuse, and not something to casually wave away because every death wasn't conclusively and directly linked to World Cup.

Like, say it's *only* a thousand. Is that ok? How many deaths are ok for this? I know people die in big construction projects, but this seems far out of line with what's acceptable to me.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:37 AM on October 28, 2022 [19 favorites]

Norwegian football magazine Josimar, which has a long and proud history of reporting on the worst aspects of the football industry, has released a special English language edition. Most of it is paywalled, but the open-access editorial is lengthy and sets out a lot of detail. Excerpt:

Outside a luxurious residential area in Doha, a Nigerian security guard told us that the reforms have benefitted him. He had long working hours, true, but his employer treated him well and he was paid decently. But, he added, for the people he had arrived in Qatar with, it was different. They still live in dirty labour camps with uncertain working hours, no health benefits, no possibility of changing jobs without their current employers’ permission, for a minimum wage of less than 300 euro per month.

Outside the Education City World Cup stadium, we talked to a crew of Indian workers who live in one of the most notorious labour camps, Al-Shahaniya, work eight hours every single day washing, sweeping and scrubbing the stadium and its surrounding area squeaky clean. They were trapped in Qatar, their passports confiscated by their company. Changing employer was not possible as their superiors refused to issue a No-Objection Certificate (NOC).

According to reforms from 2020, workers in Qatar no longer need a NOC to change employers.

posted by Kattullus at 9:56 AM on October 28, 2022 [9 favorites]

I apologize for not making it clear that The Guardian does not claim that 6,500 workers died directly as a result of helping build the stadium. Here is more context from that article:

In the past 10 years, Qatar has embarked on an unprecedented building programme, largely in preparation for the football tournament in 2022. In addition to seven new stadiums, dozens of major projects have been completed or are under way, including a new airport, roads, public transport systems, hotels and a new city, which will host the World Cup final.

While death records are not categorised by occupation or place of work, it is likely many workers who have died were employed on these World Cup infrastructure projects, says Nick McGeehan, a director at FairSquare Projects, an advocacy group specialising in labour rights in the Gulf. “A very significant proportion of the migrant workers who have died since 2011 were only in the country because Qatar won the right to host the World Cup,” he said.

While Marc Owen Jones may be an academic specialist in disinformation, he is also Associate Professor in Middle East Studies at a university in Qatar. Maybe that makes him better positioned to identify disinformation about Qatar; maybe that also makes him beholden to officials. After all, Qatar is not exactly a democratic wonderland.

As noted by Freedom House in its 2021 report, "Qatar’s hereditary emir holds all executive and legislative authority, and ultimately controls the judiciary as well. Political parties are not permitted, and the only elections are for an advisory municipal council. While Qatari citizens are among the wealthiest in the world, the vast majority of the population consists of noncitizens with no political rights, few civil liberties, and limited access to economic opportunity."
posted by Bella Donna at 9:58 AM on October 28, 2022 [10 favorites]

Any teams or players still going to play can stuff it. Really, go fuck yourselves you crapsmiths.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:59 AM on October 28, 2022 [7 favorites]

Not sure I understand where the misinformation is in that "misinformation" thread. Is the point that while yes, like 6500 people DID die, it was ONLY 650/year, and not ALL of those deaths happened literally on construction sites, so we shouldn't be concerned about them? What???
posted by bleep at 10:26 AM on October 28, 2022 [7 favorites]

When people start talking about "Yes it was a tremendous loss of life but it wasn't tremendous enough to actually care" I wish they would be specific about exactly how many people have to die for them to want to start counting. They will never tell you because those goalposts have to keep moving.
posted by bleep at 10:31 AM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

I will be boycotting. Also lost my Premier League Team.

Putin’s comments about “The West” pretty much outlines the struggle, now and the one to come.
posted by aiq at 11:11 AM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

The real scandal is what's legal.
posted by hwestiii at 11:27 AM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Bella Donna, this is an excellent post, thank you for such hard work.

The World Cup is the only pro sports event I ever watch anymore, since my football feelings died out decades ago (although goddammit, Welcome to Wrexham has kind of resurrected them by its charm alone) and I detest pro sports organizations and everything they stand for. But I didn't watch the last one because fuck Russia, and I sure as shit would never watch this one. I don't want my eyeballs or earholes being counted at all for the advertisers of this event. Wearing black kit and still going doesn't wipe away your sin, my dudes.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 11:41 AM on October 28, 2022 [5 favorites]

I think the point is that a certain amount of people die every year just in the natural course of events, and the 6500 figure includes all those people. That's misleading, because it's really the excess deaths caused by having the world cup in Qatar that is the significant figure. If I can believe spamandkimchi's link, that number may be as low as three dozen, which is still really concerning, but now that we have this bogus 6500 number, there will definitely be people who are like "36!? That's nothing compared to your lying 6500. Everything is fine..."
posted by surlyben at 11:50 AM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

The thread by Marc Owens make explicitly clear that human rights violations are a major problem in Qatar and that his intent is by no means to diminish that very real problem. His issue is with the Guardian using a somewhat misleading headline, which then easily turns into misinformation when people just read the headline and editorialize their own reading of it (i.e. implying all migrant labor deaths were linked to the World Cup).

There is still plenty of room to be critical of the choice to host the World Cup in a country where 6,500 migrant workers die in a decade - nobody is denying that.
posted by coffeecat at 11:58 AM on October 28, 2022 [8 favorites]

To illustrate how misleading the 6500 figure is: The population of migrant workers in Qatar has been around 1.5 to 2.1 million during the period that the Guardian’s statistic covered (Dec 2010–Feb 2021). If exactly 6500 migrant workers died during that period, that would mean that migrant workers had lower mortality than the general population of Qatar. In fact, it would mean that migrant workers in Qatar had lower mortality than the United States population age 25–34. (Obviously the 6500 number is an undercount even aside from the hazards of being a migrant worker in the Gulf.)
posted by mbrubeck at 12:11 PM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

The World Cup is one of the few sports events I pay attention to, but I’ll probably give the whole thing a pass this year and save my excitement for the women in 2023.
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:56 PM on October 28, 2022 [5 favorites]

Why any country or city vies for these events is beyond me especially given how much they cost and the actual benefits that accrue. For example:

Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics generated $3.6 billion in revenue, compared with over $40 billion in costs, and London’s Summer Games in 2012 generated $5.2 billion compared with $18 billion in costs. What’s more, much of the revenue doesn’t go to the host—the IOC keeps more than half of all television revenue, typically the single largest chunk of money generated by the games

And this doesn't even include the longer term maintenance costs these highly specialized stadiums incur. So many more beneficial things to spend those dollars on - housing, education, environment, arts, etc.
posted by brookeb at 1:37 PM on October 28, 2022 [4 favorites]

GenjiandProust: The World Cup is one of the few sports events I pay attention to, but I’ll probably give the whole thing a pass this year.

Qatari human rights organizations have advocated that teams take part, and that people pay attention to the event, because that way the eyes of the world will be on Qatar. International human rights organizations broadly agree, such as Amnesty International.

I’m moderately hopeful that this time around there will be a focus on human rights issues, which has been conspicuously missing through the years. As far as I can tell, the only one that led to sustained attention on human rights was the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.

The only World Cup to have been successfully boycotted was the 1966 World Cup in England where the African teams withdrew rather than take part in qualifying. It was partly for sports reasons (Africa, Asia and Oceania shared one spot between them), but also an expression of general anti-colonial sentiment against the UK (I believe the last of the detention camps in Kenya were only closed in 1960, for instance) and of South Africa’s membership in FIFA.

This boycott worked, they got a guaranteed spot at the next World Cup, South Africa was kicked out in 1965, and the extraordinary efforts of the odious FIFA president Sir Stanley Rous to reinstate them and Rhodesia were then stopped, leading to his ouster in 1974.

Excuse this walk down FIFA’s inglorious history, but it’s hard to talk about them without bringing up one horrible aspect or another.

Personally, I’ll watch the World Cup, and I’ll also be reading reports about human rights. And I’m hoping that the world, once Qatar has entered the collective mental map, will pay attention after the show ends.

But I want to be clear, if people are only going to pay attention to one of these things, reading about human rights issues in Qatar is more important than the World Cup.
posted by Kattullus at 1:58 PM on October 28, 2022 [21 favorites]

Qatari human rights organizations have advocated that teams take part, and that people pay attention to the event, because that way the eyes of the world will be on Qatar.

Thanks, Kattullus, I did not realise that. Great info on boycotts! Am not an expert on the event, Qatar, or, clearly, statistics so apologies about including the 6,500 deaths link up top.

How many people are expected to travel to Qatar for the cup?
I am seeing estimates of 1.2 million to 1.5 million visitors.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:32 PM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

This is a FANTASTIC post, Bella Donna. Thank you!

I haven't followed these stories in part because they made me so angry. Ten years ago, Qatar was one of the first connections to fly directly to Kathmandu from a city that wasn't Mumbai or Bangkok. Flights on Emirates or Qatar leaving KTM were packed with men from rural Nepal who were headed to do manual labor. The Kathmandu Post and other papers routinely published reportage on theft of passports and labor trafficking, but also carried huge ads from construction companies, hotels, cleaning services advertising benefits for Nepali migrant workers. A Nepali friend-of-a-friend pointed out that she could make more money cleaning toilets in a hotel in Dubai than teaching at university with her MA in English. The news about the building of the World Cup stadium made my blood boil.

There's lots for me to learn here.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 3:01 PM on October 28, 2022 [5 favorites]

Qatari human rights organizations have advocated that teams take part, and that people pay attention to the event, because that way the eyes of the world will be on Qatar.

I'm willing to take their word for it in this case, but it sounds suspiciously like what WWE has been saying about its 10-year multi-billion-dollar contract with Saudi Arabia (eight days until Roman Reigns defends the Universal and WWE Championships against [checks notes] Logan Paul at Crown Jewel!).
posted by Etrigan at 3:04 PM on October 28, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yesterday, Australia's national team released a video that acknowledged progress while speaking out about the nation's record on human rights and same-sex relationships–but the team still plans to play in the World Cup.

Honestly, fuck this. The Australian national team is notoriously bad. They will almost certainly get knocked out in the first round. They should just boycott, they’re basically sacrificing nothing. This is cowardice on a grand scale.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:39 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Like, say it's *only* a thousand. Is that ok? How many deaths are ok for this? I know people die in big construction projects, but this seems far out of line with what's acceptable to me.

Zero deaths is acceptable and generally reachable but of course that costs money in time, oversight, equipment and proccess. I'm currently working on a 40 billion dollar construction project with major construction spread over four sites on three continents. We're somewhere around 60% done and have had a single work related death (a few more from things like heart attacks that are expected when your workforce numbers in the tens of thousands).
posted by Mitheral at 4:22 PM on October 28, 2022 [9 favorites]

If the entire point is "6500 isn't a big number because there are way more people than that" That's not misinformation, that's a difference of opinion.
posted by bleep at 5:35 PM on October 28, 2022

Mark Owen Jones is right. Since Qatar won the rights to the world cup, 9000 21-30 year olds died in any developed country (per 2 million). If this article was published on a Russian website we would dismiss this as propaganda.
posted by Psychnic at 5:46 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

The first time that Canada is in a World Cup in a long time, and it has to be this one...
posted by clawsoon at 7:04 PM on October 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thousands of workers evicted in Qatar's capital ahead of World Cup
posted by alex_skazat at 8:20 PM on October 28, 2022 [3 favorites]

And if you're wondering why governments in some western European countries are sending delegations to watch the matches (amongst other things they'll be doing during the visit, nudge nudge), well, 'Qatar's LNG exports to Europe should be "significant" in the next five to seven years'
posted by DreamerFi at 8:33 AM on October 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Yesterday:

Qatar has emptied apartment blocks housing thousands of foreign workers in the same areas in the centre of the capital Doha where visiting soccer fans will stay during the World Cup, workers who were evicted from their homes told Reuters.

They said more than a dozen buildings had been evacuated and shut down by authorities, forcing the mainly Asian and African workers to seek what shelter they could - including bedding down on the pavement outside one of their former homes.

If anything, it seems like it would at least be morally impossible to actually attend.
posted by General Malaise at 2:33 PM on October 29, 2022 [3 favorites]