Qatar It had been a country closed to the planet until it decided to host a world. This territory of 11,571 square kilometers, with a population smaller than that of Medellín, receives the second most important event in international sports with a accumulation of accusations on the shoulders of irregularities in Human Rights.
The eyes of the world are on a nation of restrictions. So many, that the media have to explain whether or not beer can be consumed during the soccer match because in that Muslim nation liquor is regulated: only non-alcoholic beer will be sold in the stadiums and liquor will be sold in the vicinity of these, but at specific times before and following the games.
It is also time to detail the dress code for foreign women who travel to a territory where, on paper, they have fewer rights than in their nations of origin. Showing your legs is not a possibility and it is preferable to avoid pronounced necklines to integrate into a culture in which they must cover the entire body.
Due to these types of details, it is a Cup in a world quite different from the one known in America or Europe. A Qatari woman can only attend events if she is authorized by her partner, she even can only receive sexual health care if she carries a marriage certificate because, under that system, intimate relationships are only for people married.
The homosexuality is punishablethe law establishes penalties of up to three years in prison for a man who “incites” another to “commit an act of sodomy or immorality” and up to ten if people of the same sex have sexual relations, even if they are consensual.
This panorama of lacking freedom of expression also touches the press because journalists might go to jail if they criticize the Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is the leader of the regime. The facts speak for themselves because three Norwegian journalists who were investigating the working conditions of the migrant workers who built the stadiums were arrested in November 2021 for reporting on a story that made the Muslim caste look bad. Now he has an opportunity to show another facet thanks to football.
blood stages
In geopolitics, have the approval of the Fifa it can be just as important as being a member state of the United Nations. By becoming the venue for the tournament, Qatar achieved a global visibility that few nations have had because the federation even has more members than the UN itself.
But that decision has cost the Federation. The discord is such because Qatar host the party that the former president of Fifa, Joseph Blatter, assured this week that it was a mistake to choose that country as host.
The same Federation was paying over the years the political burden of having granted the leadership of the tournament to a questioned country. These 12 years that passed from the announcement of Qatar 2022 to the holding of the tournament have been marked by controversy.
In a nation of 2.4 million people that was not even a soccer powerhouse, they had to build eight sports venues from scratch with foreign labor, which according to Human Rights Watch had no guarantee in the protection of their human and labor rights.
Added to these massive works were the construction of a Metro line and hotels that required the labor of migrants from Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other poor nations because in Qatar there were no ones to put on the boots and helmet.
According to that same organization, their contracts lacked guarantees that are common in the Western world. The modern infrastructure required investments of more than 220,000 million dollars and an incalculable cost in human lives.
A Guardian investigation indicated that at least 6,500 migrants died working on the works, although the Qatari regime denied that figure. The organization Amnesty International says that it has verified some of those deaths with death certificates from the countries of origin, but does not say how many. The figure is a muddy field and the checking of the data is derisory to verify if so much blood was spilled, or not, to make the World Cup.
If true, it would not be the first soccer summit marked by death. In 1978 Argentina hosted the event in the midst of the military dictatorship and even just eight years ago, for Brazil 2014, there were reports of workers killed during the construction of the stadiums. Both cases have been denied by FIFA, which by 2022 had to publish a document on working conditions for workers.
The power of “blue” blood
Qatar has no president, let alone democratic elections. The command is in charge of Emir Tamim bin Hamadheir to a monarchical dynasty in which power is distributed among those of “blue blood” and not among the people.
Calling elections to choose the head of state is not a possibility because the Al Thani They are in charge of the executive, legislative and judicial powers. The emir himself nominates the prime minister and the members of the cabinet, political parties are not allowed and elections can only be held to form the municipal councils that are consultative in nature.
This has 45 seats, 15 that are chosen by hand by the emir and 30 that are granted through a conditional vote. The most recent contest was held in 2021 and only people from families whose ancestors had been in Qatar before 1930 might vote, a paradoxical condition considering that 90% of its 2.4 million inhabitants are foreign. Caste participation? In any case, this norm is so controversial that the emir promised to change it for the next elections.
Freedom House says that the vast majority of the Qatari population is made up of “non-citizens” because they lack political rights, few civil liberties and limited access to economic opportunities.
In the midst of the questions regarding rights, Fifa shows a facet of concern for peace. Its president, Gianni Infantino, asked for there to be a truce in the war in Ukraine for the World Cupa request that has not been answered by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Just four years ago it was Russia that was opening up to the world under the pretext of soccer, so both events have an element in common: two questioned regarding their handling of Human Rights got the endorsement of the Federation to host a tournament that has western tourists thousands of kilometers away from their culture.
What is behind it, explains the tenured professor of Political Science at the Javeriana University, Andrés Dávila, is the soft power. That soft power of exposing culture to the globe to influence other countries. An example is music as South Korea’s letter of introduction, the irruption of Indian cinema on screens or Qatari football in the middle of the Cup.
And it is that hosting the World Cup, says Dávila, allows Qatar to legitimize its monarchy internationally, a system in which there is too much wealth and too few people, but that in this attempt to show another facet the road has stones like the death of migrants in the construction of stadiums.
“In their tradition
and their culture, they have some forms of contracting that is slave-owning, a stain that adds to the feeling that they bought Fifa or the World Cup,” Dávila points out.
Precisely, that is the other shadow of the tournament. Three years following it was assigned the headquarters, Qatargate broke out, a journalistic investigation published in the French magazine France Football that detailed the irregularities that would have occurred during the awarding of the headquarters to Qatar. Did the Federation receive petrodollars to give headquarters to a questioned country?
