M. Grossekathofer
Qatar has had a Renassaince in the past two decades, driven by oil money. It has tried very hard to show a glitzy, modern and hospitable face.
But the reality in Qatar has a very ugly side, one that has prompted human rights observers to blow the whistle on the treatment of workers.
Qatar is a place where 300,000 millionaires avail themselves of the very hard work of 1.7 million immigrants.
While the children of the ruling family and oil magnates drive around in Amg Mercedes Benz in the United States, the workers who are building Qatar often go unpaid, and even more often work in squallid, inhumane conditions.
More than 70 Nepalis have died from being worked to death in the Qatari construction sites since 2012.
Most of the people are also believed to be held against their will. The great majority of workers are not Muslim, but they must work under an archaic Muslim tradition that allows the employer to have almost absolute power over the worker.
One of the people who is being held against his will, and unpaid, is a French footballer called Belounis. He has not been paid for 17 months, and he cannot leave Qatar.
Some of the footballers like Belounis, who make it to Qatar, do so because their career might be floundering in Europe. They are promised nearly 10,000 dollars a month, but soon after they arrive, the payments stop. Not all footballers end up in this condition. One spanish player, Raul Gonzalez, makes almost 10 million a year and is a star. And that is because he is in the first division team, and is the captain of the team, hence having the greatest visibility abroad.
Belounis has sued, but the Qatari government has informed him that he will not get an exit visa unless he drops the lawsuit. In addition, they are now going to charge him for staying in the quarters assigned to him as free when he was brought to Qatar.
There are other footballers like him, in the same condition, unable to leave. Help is not coming neither from the Olympic Committee nor the Qatari football association.
But these people, as ugly as their situation is in Qatar, are lucky compared to those immigrants who are working as laborers.
The commission sent to investigate the conditions of the laborers has found that the living quarters in which the laborers are packed, are beyond anything acceptable or fit for habitation.
The furious building projects too have to do with the event. But the builders are being employed in slave like conditions, and most work for less than 1 euro per hour.
The whole idea of holding a world cup in a country where the temperatures might very well soar to 120 degrees F, has already preoccupied some of the players, who say that it will be nearly impossible to play or train under such extreme conditions.
The first alarm bell was rung by Bild, a German newspaper, on how Qatar aims to achieve the massive construction process associated with the Cup.
The papers said that "The foreign workers, mostly from Nepal and the Philippines, get a pittance of less than one euro per hour, live in tiny rooms, some at 50 degrees (120 Farhrenheit), without a working air conditioner. Often they cannot leave Qatar because their employers have taken their passports from them. Confiscating passports is a routine practice in the Emirates, and also in Saudi Arabia.
"Qatar is a slave state", continues the Bild article. "To build the infrastructure, more workers are likely to die, than the 736 footballers who are playing in the world cup."
The UK paper, the Guardian, also has an extensive article and video on the findings of the comission that has gone to investigate Qatar. For the video, please click on the link below.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2013/sep/25/qatar-migrant-workers-world-cup-host-video
Partial Sources : Spiegel International/ The Guardian/ 10.11.13
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