Qatar FIFA World Cup controversy: What you need to know

Explainer – The Qatar FIFA World Cup has been surrounded by controversy round employee’s rights, same-sex relationships and allegations of corruption.

With the tiny gulf state of Qatar internet hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, everybody from soccer followers, politicians and commentators have had their say on the moral dilemmas of this yr’s iteration of the world’s largest sporting occasion.

Because the event reaches fever pitch and the drama across the on-field motion will increase, it is essential to not overlook the troublesome path which has led the world of soccer to Qatar.

Alongside the journey to the 2022 World Cup there have been allegations of corruption, criticism of non-inclusive legal guidelines and groups blocked from protesting on the sphere, so what’s behind all this controversy?

RNZ is right here to clear all of it up.

Qatar’s stance on same-sex relationships

Qatar is an Arab nation, the primary to host a FIFA World Cup, and one of the crucial extensively criticised points on the event has been FIFA’s determination to award internet hosting rights to a rustic the place homosexuality is prohibited by regulation.

Qatar’s official faith of Islam is interwoven inside the nation’s cultural and governmental leanings, with Islamic regulation enshrined within the nation’s structure.

Below the Qatar Penal Code 2004, same-sex intercourse is criminalised and carries a most jail sentence of seven years.

The regulation additionally criminalises ‘Main, instigating or seducing a male in any option to commit sodomy’ and ‘inducing or seducing a male or feminine in any option to commit unlawful or immoral actions’ which carries a most jail sentence of three years.

Worldwide outrage in direction of the host nation’s non-inclusive stance was stoked within the buildup to the World Cup, when former Qatari footballer and ambassador for the event Khalid Salman described homosexuality as “damage in the mind” in an interview with German media.

World Cup 2022 chief government Nasser Al Khater mentioned Qatar was a tolerant nation and LGBT+ people would not face “persecution of any sort”.

Nonetheless, many soccer followers and commentators have argued Qatar’s stance on homosexuality doesn’t replicate soccer’s ethos as a sport for all.

In an obvious try to scale back the politicisation of the difficulty, Qatar World Cup officers have been removing LGBTQIA+ symbols from fans coming into stadiums, corresponding to rainbow flags or clothes that induce related imagery.

Weeks earlier than the event FIFA launched an announcement calling for nations to “focus on the football”, which drew heavy criticism from human rights organisations and commentators world wide.

On the sphere, many worldwide groups that deliberate protests utilizing rainbow “One Love” captain’s armbands have been coerced into dropping their protests earlier than the primary sport kicked off, with any participant sporting the image threatened with on-field disciplinary motion by way of an instantaneous yellow card.

Deaths of migrant employees and human rights abuses

The Qatar World Cup boasts the best infrastructure expenditure in FIFA’s historical past, with the Qatari authorities spending effectively over $200 billion on the event, in keeping with Forbes.

This unbelievable sum of money went into funding the development of eight model new stadiums, roading, lodging and different infrastructure in Qatar’s capital metropolis of Doha, the place all 64 video games are being performed.

With the combination of intense funding in development and Qatar’s questionable report of employee’s rights abuses, accusations of pointless deaths of migrant-workers have blighted the repute of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Within the buildup to Qatar 2022, 1000’s of migrant employees travelled to the Gulf state to take up a plethora of job alternatives created by the booming rush to create infrastructure in time for the event.

Many of those employees got here from growing international locations corresponding to Bangladesh and Nepal.

It has been reported that many of those migrant employees have been victims of labour rights abuses, living in poor conditions, with some employees reporting being misled across the nature of their employment.

Many Qatari corporations operated a system referred to as ‘Kafala’, which required them to sponsor employees to enter the nation but in addition prevented them from leaving their jobs with out permission from their employer.

Some employees arriving in Qatar for engineering jobs discovered themselves forced into manual labour jobs, others had their passports confiscated and lots of lived in squalid and cramped residing situations.

Over the past decade, worldwide strain has seen Qatar introduce labour reforms, together with the abolition of the ‘Kafala’ system and will increase to minimal wage charges.

Whereas there have been widespread claims that 1000’s of migrant employees have died in Qatar, it stays unclear the precise whole of deaths associated to the World Cup, with reporting various between totally different information shops and NGOs.

An independent investigation from Amnesty Worldwide in 2021 claimed that as many as 15,000 migrant employees had died in World Cup-related circumstances.

In the meantime, an investigation from The Guardian in the identical yr claimed a complete of 6500 deaths.

Nonetheless, truth checkers have deemed the outcomes of those investigations to be misleading as they’re primarily based on official figures from Qatar and people of residence nations of migrant employees regarding deaths of all migrants within the nation.

For an prolonged interval, Qatari authorities have claimed that in the course of the development of the eight stadiums in and round Doha there had been solely three deaths of migrant employees in work-related occasions and 37 in non-work-related occasions. Although this declare solely pertains to the development of stadiums.

Compared, eight workers died in the course of the development or refurbishment of 12 venues on the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

In the meantime, a People Rights Watch report claimed 18 employees misplaced their lives on World Cup stadium websites in preparation for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

In late November 2022, the pinnacle of Qatar’s World Cup organisation Hassan al-Thawadi admitted in a TV interview there have been “between 400 and 500” migrant employee deaths in wider development associated to the World Cup since 2010.

Simply days later, Qatar’s Supreme Committee refuted these claims with a statement saying that quantity referred to work-related deaths “masking all sectors and nationalities” nationwide from 2014-2022.

Human rights organisations and numerous football associations are persevering with to push FIFA to establish a compensation fund for the households of migrant employees who’ve died in Qatar.

Alleged corruption in bidding course of

After Qatar was awarded the internet hosting rights for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in December 2010, questions have been raised in regards to the legitimacy of the FIFA bidding course of.

The choice, which additionally awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia, has been dogged by accusations of widespread corruption, with two investigations launched by Swiss prosecutors and the US Department of Justice in 2015.

Nonetheless, each Qatar and Russia maintained their innocence and have been successfully cleared of any wrongdoing by a FIFA investigation in 2017.

In 2020, the US Division of Justice revealed particulars about cash acquired by 5 top-level FIFA board members forward of the vote which resulted in Russia and Qatar being awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups respectively.

US prosecutors claimed that Qatari and Russian representatives had bribed FIFA officials to safe internet hosting rights for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

The New York Instances reported most FIFA officers who voted on the internet hosting rights of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, together with the previous FIFA president Sepp Blatter, have been accused of illegal or dishonest behaviour, although not essentially charged with against the law.

In November 2022, the disgraced former Fifa president Sepp Blatter mentioned the choice to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was a “mistake”, a transfer which was extensively deemed to be a futile try and distance himself from the controversy.

Blatter mentioned he voted for america and blamed then-Uefa president Michel Platini for swinging the vote in Qatar’s favour.

Beer ban

Whereas alcohol and soccer are extensively loved collectively across the Western world, followers on the Qatar World Cup have been left upset when its organisers reversed a decision to allow the sale of alcohol at stadiums.

Simply two days earlier than the primary match kicked off, FIFA introduced no alcoholic beer can be offered at stadiums.

“Following discussions between host nation authorities and FIFA, a call has been made to focus the sale of alcoholic drinks on the FIFA Fan Competition, different fan locations and licensed venues, eradicating gross sales factors of beer from Qatar’s FIFA World Cup 2022 stadium perimeters,” a FIFA spokesperson mentioned in an announcement.

Whereas the sale of alcohol will not be prohibited by Islamic regulation in Qatar, it’s closely restricted, and it’s an offence to drink alcohol or be drunk in public.

The federal government had initially dedicated to enjoyable its legal guidelines across the sale of alcohol for the event, to permit followers to drink and purchase alcohol at venues.

Nonetheless, after in depth negotiations between FIFA, long-time World Cup sponsor Budweiser and Qatar World Cup organisers, the deal fell by way of when over 1,000,000 followers have been already travelling to the event.

For a few years, the Qatari organisers had promised alcohol can be extensively accessible to followers however the determination left supporter teams questioning the nation’s capability to fulfil its commitments.

Whereas unable to drink in venues, supporters are nonetheless in a position to buy beer in designated Fan Zones at an eye-watering worth of $US14 per half litre.

In the meantime, these with VIP tickets at World Cup matches will nonetheless give you the chance drink freely at stadium suites with FIFA promoting a choice of beers, Champagne, wines and premium spirits.