DOHA, QATAR - MARCH 30: al-Rihla, the official adidas matchball for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 is ... [+]
It is impossible to delink global sporting events from concerns about human rights. The Winter Olympics last February were held in China, where the host government has systematically dismantled democratic institutions in Hong Kong and detained more than one million members of the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang Province, where the Beijing government has established forced labor camps. Two U.S. administrations have labeled China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as a genocide.
The men’s World Cup is being played in Qatar, a wealthy country that has built its grand soccer stadiums, highways, and hotels by exploiting hundreds of thousands of poor migrant workers, mostly from South Asia and Africa. Unfortunately, in both situations, international sports organizations have not acted decisively to address these human rights abuses.
Instead, Thomas Bach, the President of the International Olympic Committee, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino have relied on an outmoded playbook, arguing that global sporting events should be insulated from politics. They cynically dismiss concerns about human rights abuses as nothing more than a byproduct of global politics, a form of western interference and imperialism. But the governments hosting these sporting events are very much making a political point, even if Bach or Infantino says the IOC and FIFA should not.
In the leadup to the Beijing Olympics, Bach never voiced even a hint of concern about human rights violations by the Chinese government. Instead, he fell back on the tired bromide that the Olympic movement must embrace “all political, cultural and other differences,” which he has said is “only possible if the Olympic Games are politically neutral and do not become a tool to achieve political goals.” Does Bach consider the detention of a million people because of their ethnicity or religion merely a cultural difference?
As international attention escalated and Chinese leader Xi Jinping grew increasingly defiant, a former Chinese Olympic tennis player, Peng Shuai, complained publicly about her sexual harassment by a senior Chinese official. Then, she disappeared. In November, the IOC held a video call with Peng and Bach where the IOC reported that she was “safe and well”. On February 5, days before the games were to begin, Bach worked with Chinese authorities to arrange a highly staged public event in which Peng briefly resurfaced and said that everything was fine, contrary to her earlier accusation. But since the Olympics ended, Peng has not been seen publicly, and Bach has maintained his characteristic silence.
The focus now has shifted to Qatar, which has been hosting the 2022 World Cup. Once again, the host nation is trying desperately to divert attention from its serious human rights issues, including the mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of migrant construction workers who helped to build eight world-class stadiums, miles of roads, new hotels, and other facilities. Most of these workers were recruited from India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. The vast majority were forced to pay for their own recruitment, often up to a year’s wages, meaning that they worked essentially as indentured laborers until their debts were repaid. And when they arrived in Doha, these workers were jammed into crowded dorms and forced to work long hours in the blazing heat and all too often in unsafe conditions.
Many died, either from heat-related heart issues or from the many industrial accidents on under-regulated construction sites. Initially, the government said only three workers died in connection with World Cup construction. Now it has amended that figure, acknowledging that 37 have died. This is still far below the estimate of 6,500 deaths reported in The Guardian and a study done by the Secretariat of Nepal’s Foreign Employment Board. The Nepalese study found that more than 2,000 Nepalis have died in Qatar since World Cup construction began in 2010. Almost 700 of these workers died from heart attacks, another 183 from industrial accidents and 196 from suicide.
While we will never know the precise number, it is safe to assume that many more construction workers died building World Cup facilities than the government is willing to acknowledge and that the figure is likely higher than from previous international sporting events. It is highly unlikely that the families of workers who lost their lives in Qatar will ever receive full compensation.
And yet Infantino, the president of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, has gone to great lengths to defend the Qatari government against critics of the country’s labor practices. In a letter to the participating national teams sent two weeks before the World Cup began, Infantino urged them to stop speaking out about labor conditions and other human rights issues and instead to “focus on the football.”
The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, appeared on his country’s national television in October to emphasize a number of reforms his government have made to the traditional Kafala labor contract system. Such changes established a minimum wage and allowed foreign workers to move from one job to another without their employers’ consent. These are positive reforms for which the government often does not get the credit it deserves. But the emir went on to condemn those who say that further reforms are needed. He dismissed these critics as engaging in what he called “an unprecedented campaign” based on “fabrications and double standards that were so ferocious that it has unfortunately prompted many people to question the real reasons and motives.”
In a press briefing, FIFA’s Infantino echoed the emir’s condemnation of critics who he said were engaged in a “one-sided moral lesson.” In emotional terms, Infantino suggested that outside criticism of labor abuses was both illegitimate and inappropriate. “I am a European,” he said. “For what we have been doing for 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before giving moral lessons.”
Quite the contrary, advocacy on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable populations is a collective responsibility, rooted in the collective response to the horrors of World War II and the adoption of universal human rights standards.
Those on the receiving end of human rights abuses, whether the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in China or the migrant workers in Qatar and other Gulf states, welcome and need this global attention and outside pressure for reform. It brings global attention to their plight, scrutiny they alone cannot generate. Those leading global sporting organizations do a disservice to their legitimacy and to the games they oversee when they fail to recognize their responsibility to support this agenda.
