Qatar 2022, the World Cup of Shame

The football world cup to be held in Qatar in November this year, not in the summer as usual, because the players and the public can literally die of heat stroke in temperatures above 50 degrees, has been surrounded of controversy since it was announced as the winner of the venue in 2010, South Korea, Japan, the United States and Australia were the other contenders but only Qatar came to the price.

Qatar es una península desértica en el golfo pérsico y eso no impidió que el pequeño país se postulará para el mundial de 2022, compitiendo con otras potencias mucho mejor equipadas como Estados Unidos, Australia, corea del sur y Japón, pero sabían cuántos antes que ellos y sólo basta con sobornar a la cantidad suficiente de funcionarios de la FIFA para obtener la sede a pesar de que el desierto no sea el lugar más adecuado para llevar a cabo este tipo de eventos, ni el más ético.

Qatar, like most of the countries in the Arab world, are not exactly determinants of human rights and, like Dubai, is famous for using the cheapest labor available, there are migrant slaves from poor countries in Africa and South Asia who are deceived by drug traffickers. people disguised as recruitment agencies that charge them to place them in a job in the Middle East, with a salary more attractive than what they can find in their country of origin.

The fees for employment and transfer are enormous, so normally the families of the workers need to apply for loans that in theory they could pay off in a short time once the worker is receiving their first salaries, but this never happens since in the place of destination realize that the job offers them much less money than what they were promised in their country.

Not being able to pay more than their own subsistence expenses, workers cannot send money to their families, who in some cases end up losing their houses for not being able to pay the loan debt, in Qatar there is the sponsorship system or Kafala that leaves the worker at the mercy of his employer who processes temporary visas and withholds his passports, which is also a very common practice in Qatar, Bahrain or Kuwait, in this way the worker is prevented from changing jobs or leaving the country.

It is not clear that without explanation the workers stop receiving their salary for months, despite not being allowed to stop presenting the work and the complaints made by the workers against their employers simply never prosper so they remain trapped in that situation exploitation indefinitely, this by itself already qualifies as slavery.

Immigrant camps are facilities located on the outskirts of glamorous cities, where they cannot be seen by the usual visitor, buildings that only offer common dormitories for between eight and twelve people, common bathrooms for 40 people without maintenance or cleaning, and in Completely unsanitary conditions.

In the case of construction, they are exposed to temperatures above 40 degrees for a good part of their day, which often causes workers to collapse due to heat stroke, heart attacks and respiratory arrest, which is the main cause of death of workers. immigrants working in the construction industry in Qatar when workers collapse at their workplace, are taken to the hospital and die there, the official cause is not linked to the work they were doing, as happens with accidents, so that their families are denied any compensation.

Among the preparations for the 2022 World Cup, Qatar has had to build five stadiums, expand two existing ones, double the capacity of its airport, build a new subway system, a thousand kilometers of highways, tens of thousands of hotel rooms and a city intelligent called Lusail, this required a lot of labor and it is estimated that these projects left a balance of 6,500 fallen migrants in a period of 10 years.

This obviously does not give a good image and if you add the lag in issues such as human rights, equality and tolerance that is the norm in countries like Qatar, it is not surprising that public opinion where in the event including teams from countries like Germany, Holland and Norway who have protested and threaten to boycott the tournament by stopping sending their teams despite having qualified.

I don't know if you can enjoy World Cup matches without feeling guilty about the atrocities suffered by immigrants in Qatar.