Category: World Cup 2022

Just your daily reminder that the 2022 World Cup stadiums are being built by workers who aren’t getting paid, or as it’s better known historically, slave labor. From Amnesty International, via the Associated Press:

Mercury MENA worked on several projects in Qatar, including the stadium, the new Qatar National Library and a workers’ hospital and modern accommodation for labourers, Amnesty said. Workers told the human rights-focused non-governmental organisation that the firm owed them on average between $1,370 to $2,470, a huge sum for their families back home. It said one worker was owed nearly $25,000 after over a decade of work.

That’s right, math fans: One poor migrant worker spent more than ten years building stadiums and such, despite his employer stiffing him on $25,000 in pay, yet couldn’t leave because Qatari law requires an employer-signed “exit permit” before they can go home. This is the year 2018.

You can read the full Amnesty report here. Or just crawl back into bed and pull the covers over your head, both are acceptable responses.

We already knew that construction workers on Qatar’s 2022 World Cup stadium were dying at a frightening rate and held in the country under slave-like conditions, but we didn’t have, say, an Amnesty International report outright comparing conditions to slavery. Until now:

Rights group Amnesty International has accused Qatar of using forced labour at a flagship World Cup 2022 stadium.

Amnesty says workers at Khalifa International Stadium are forced to live in squalid accommodation, pay huge recruitment fees and have had wages withheld and passports confiscated.

It also accuses Fifa of “failing almost completely” to stop the tournament being “built on human rights abuses”.

 

You can download the Amnesty report, “The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game,” here; it’s long and detailed, so let me just cite two excerpts:

“My life here is like a prison. The work is dif cult, we worked for many hours in the hot sun. When I rst complained about my situation, soon after arriving in Qatar, the manager said ‘if you [want to] complain you can but there will be consequences. If you want to stay in Qatar be quiet and keep working’. Now I am forced to stay in Qatar and continue working.” —Deepak, metalworker on Khalifa International Stadium, a FIFA 2022 World Cup venue, speaking in May 2015

This is a big enough deal that even Al Jazeera, which is actually owned by members of the Qatari government, felt obligated to cover it. Meanwhile, FIFA, which granted Qatar the 2022 tournament after massive bribery in the bidding, continues to insist that it won’t move the cup to another nation that’s less slavey. This is going to get really ugly — not that pretty much all big sporting events like the World Cup and Olympics don’t get really ugly, and usually everyone forgets about it as soon as there’s some games to watch, but this seems like it might actually be the exception, maybe.

Now that FIFA officials are getting arrested left and right following a three-year corruption probe by the FBI, the Washington Post has taken the opportunity to publish a chart comparing worker deaths in Qatar during construction of 2022 World Cup stadiums to worker deaths in other nations’ preparations for World Cups and Olympics. And while the numbers aren’t completely exact — there’s some guesswork involved, and it’s not possible to determine exactly how many of these deaths were on World Cup projects — still, holy crap:

That’s an insane body count among the workers that Deadspin has taken to calling (entirely accurately) “FIFA slaves,” and is only likely to increase calls for a boycott of the Qatar World Cup, the ouster of FIFA president Sepp Blatter, the reassignment of the 2022 World Cup (and maybe the 2018 World Cup currently slated for Russia) to another nation, or all of the above. Not that any of those are exactly likely, but they’re a hell of a lot more likely than they were before the concierge at a five-star Zurich hotel called upstairs to say, “We’re going to need you to come to your door and open it for us or we’re going to have to kick it in.”