No sporting event is worth 1 death let alone over 4000 to date
Qatar has the highest ratio of migrant workers to domestic population in the world: more than 90% of the workforce are immigrants and the country is expected to recruit up to 1.5 million more labourers to build the stadiums, roads, ports and hotels needed for the tournament. Nepalese account for about 40% of migrant labourers in Qatar. More than 100,000 Nepalese left for the emirate last year.
All these laborers are subject to Kafala Law
As for reform
Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary, said, “Promises of reform have been used as a smokescreen to draw in companies and governments to do business in Qatar as the Gulf State rolls out massive infrastructure developments to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.”
The new labour law does not abolish the notorious exit permits, and workers still have to get their employers’ permission to leave the country. Workers will supposedly be able to appeal to the Interior Ministry, but most workers live in fear of that Ministry. Migrant workers do not have the right to join a union or have a collective voice with elected workplace and representative committees. Domestic workers remain wholly excluded from the labour law.
“International companies doing business in Qatar can no longer be lured by Qatar’s promises of reform. The threat to the reputation of international companies using an enslaved migrant workforce in Qatar has increased with the Government’s sham reforms,” said Burrow.
Even then, getting even those countries that have supposedly reformed Kafala Law to actually enforce compliance still have passport and wage withholding by employers.
“Under the kafala system it is all too easy for an unscrupulous employer to get away with the late payment of salaries, housing workers in squalid and cramped accommodation, or threatening workers who complain about their conditions. That is why kafala requires a major overhaul, not just tinkering at the edges,” said Qadri.
Qatar is currently spending $100 billion on this program of development surrounding the World Cup [Soccer for those not following the plot]
Qatar [a non soccer nation] winning the world cup blew FIFA’s systemic bribery and corruption cycle wide open. Working conditions for migrants in the Gulf States was well known, but the sheer scale of the money involved overcame any reticence.
Qatar has often been cited with respect to the sponsoring of International Terrorism
“Give your money to the ones who will spend it on jihad, not aid,” implored the sheikh, Hajaj al-Ajmi, recently identified by the United States government as a fund-raiser for Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.
Sheikh Ajmi and at least a half-dozen others identified by the United States as private fund-raisers for Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise operate freely in Doha, often speaking at state-owned mosques and even occasionally appearing on Al Jazeera. The state itself has provided at least some form of assistance — whether sanctuary, media, money or weapons — to the Taliban of Afghanistan, Hamas of Gaza, rebels from Syria, militias in Libya and allies of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region.
Some might argue that giving Qatar the world cup has exposed their feudal treatment of immigrant workers, the problem is that this was well known before this award. Attention will be given up and until the world cup in 2022, after that, not so much.
Supposedly a celebration of a sport, but this time it is one bathed in blood.