The World Cup games begin in Qatar following countless heart-wrenching stories. As per various investigation reports, thousands of migrant workers have died in the country over the past decade.
There have been 6,500 deaths of south Asian migrants mostly from India and Nepal since Qatar was awarded the right to host the World Cup in 2010.
Behind the statistics lie countless stories of devastated families who have been left without their main breadwinner, struggling to gain compensation and confused about the circumstances of their loved one’s death.
However, according to the Qatar government, its accident records showed that between 2014 and 2020, there were 37 deaths among labourers at World Cup stadium construction sites, only three of which were “work-related”.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says this is an underestimate. Qatar doesn’t count deaths from heart attacks and respiratory failure as work-related – even though these are common symptoms of heatstroke, brought on from doing heavy labour in very high temperatures.
Qatar has been plagued by allegations of human rights abuse and labour violations for years with international organizations consistently reporting that migrant labourers have been subject to serious exploitation and abuse.
In 2016, Amnesty International accused Qatari companies of using forced labour.
It said many workers lived in squalid accommodation, were forced to pay huge recruitment fees and had wages withheld and their passports confiscated.
Since 2017, the government has introduced measures to protect foreign labourers from working in very hot weather, limit their working hours, and improve the conditions in workers’ camps.
However, in a 2021 report, campaign group Human Rights Watch said foreign workers were still suffering from “punitive and illegal wage deductions”, and faced “months of unpaid wages for long hours of gruelling work”.
Qatari companies used to operate a system called “kafala”, under which they sponsored foreign workers to come to the country but then prevented them from leaving their jobs.
For the workers’ relatives, the deaths have left grief and debt, but also a deep and distressing uncertainty over the way they died and what, in the end, they were owed.
For every family willing to share their stories of loss publicly, many others are coping silently with similarly catastrophic losses.
Not only this but the stories of bribery and corruption have also surfaced. The selection of Qatar as World Cup host has long been dogged by such allegations.
The selection was announced in 2010 after a series of votes by FIFA officials. Qatar won out over bids by the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Australia.
Over the years, various officials, both from FIFA and other organizations, have been accused of accepting or soliciting bribes to guide the World Cup to Qatar.
It is worth mentioning here that Qatar does not have enough footballing pedigree to stage a World Cup. It is natural to feel, therefore, that other factors were at play in it getting the nod. It is also a tiny country for such a big event, the smallest since Switzerland in 1954 to host a World Cup.
When it won selection in 2010, Qatar lacked many of the stadiums, hotels and highways needed to stage the tournament. In the past 12 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 to host the World Cup final. To achieve all of this, workers were purportedly asked to perform superhuman efforts, with little to no regard for their health and safety that led to many countless brutal stories soaked in tears and blood.
Additionally, FIFA, which is expecting billions of dollars in revenue for the games and has human rights responsibilities, has not made a commitment to establish a remedy fund. Instead, it scolded football associations and players who have called on FIFA to support migrant workers’ demand to establish a compensation fund, telling them to “focus on football.” Qatari authorities are opposing the fund but have the data and existing mechanisms that could be used to build and expand on systems to provide a remedy for the abuses.
Understanding the seriousness of this issue, it is appropriate to say that Qatar has laid the foundation of FIFA world cup on the grave of humanity and whoever wins the blue riband competition will lift a cup that is ‘blood-stained’.