IOC and the rest as well. Oh well.. At least Im not supporting either of them anymore as I ve stopped paying for fotball altogether.
Eric On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 11:50 PM, Phill Shields <[email protected]>wrote: > V interesting and shocking. > > FIFA has no morals. Just lining their pockets. > > Nick <[email protected]> wrote: > > > http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/qatar-human-rights-sport-cohen > > > How many more must die for Qatar's World Cup? > In hosting the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Fifa is choosing to ignore the > abuse of migrant workers > Share928 > > > inShare > 3 > Email > > > With the European football association, Uefa, reaching the unavoidable > conclusion that you cannot play competitive sport in the 50C heat of a > Qatari summer, the way is clear for the international football association, > Fifa, to break with precedent and make a decision that does not seem > corrupt or senseless or both. > > All being well, the 2022 tournament will be held in the winter. Just one > niggling question remains: how many lives will be lost so that the > FifaWorld Cup™ can live up to its boast that it is the most successful > festival of sport on the planet. "More workers will die building World Cup > infrastructure than players will take to the field," predicts Sharan > Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. > Even if the teams in Qatar use all their substitutes, she is likely to be > right. > > Qatar's absolute monarchy, run by the fabulously rich and extraordinarily > secretive Al Thani clan, no more keeps health and safety statistics than it > allows free elections. The Trade Union Confederation has had to count the > corpses the hard way. It found that 83 Indians have died so far this year. > The Gulf statelet was also the graveyard for 119 Nepalese construction > workers. With 202 migrants from other countries dying over the same nine > months, Ms Burrow is able to say with confidence there is at least one > death for every day of the year. The body count can only rise now that > Qatar has announced that it will take on 500,000 more migrants, mainly from > the Indian subcontinent, to build the stadiums, hotels and roads for 2022. > > Not all the fatalities are on construction sites. The combination of > back-breaking work, nonexistent legal protections, intense heat and labour > camps without air conditioning allows death to come in many guises. To give > you a taste of its variety, the friends of Chirari Mahato went online to > describe how he would work from 6am to 7pm. He would return to a hot, > unventilated room he shared with 12 others. Because he died in his sleep, > rather than on site, his employers would not accept that they had worked > him to death. There are millions of workers like him around the Gulf. When > we gawp at the wealth that allows the Qatari royals to buy the Olympic > Village and Chelsea Barracks, we miss their plight, and the strangeness of > the oil rich states, too. > > How to characterise them? "Absolute monarchy" does not begin to capture a > society such as Qatar, where migrants make up 99% of the private sector > workforce. Apartheid South Africa is a useful point of reference. The > 225,000 Qatari citizens can form trade unions and strike. The roughly 1.8 > million migrants cannot. Sparta also comes to mind. But instead of a > warrior elite living off the labour of helots, we have plutocrats and > sybarites sustained by faceless armies of disposable migrants. > > The official justification for oppression is, as so often, religious. > Migrants and employers are bound by the kafala system – taken from Islamic > law on the adoption of children. "Kafala" derives from "to feed". > Nourishment is the last thing the system provides, however. It delivers > captive labour instead. Migrant workers cannot change jobs without their > sponsoring employers' consent. As Human Rights Watch says, if workers walk > out, the employers – the adoptive parents – can say they have absconded and > the authorities will arrest them. > > In order to leave Qatar, migrants must obtain an exit visa from their > sponsor. This stipulation means that they can be held hostage if they > threaten to sue over a breach of contract. Wouldn't it make a bracing > change if the religious leaders we hear condemning free speech as blasphemy > so often could find the time to damn this exploitation? > > It is not just poor construction workers who suffer. One might expect that > Fifa would have been concerned about the fate of foreign footballers > working under kafala contracts. Abdeslam Ouaddou, who once played for > Fulham, has warned players not to go near Qatar. Speaking from experience – > he played for Qatar SC in the Qatari domestic league – he said that if a > player is injured or his form drops, the club can break his contract. If > the player goes to lawyers, the club (as "sponsor") can refuse to let him > leave the country until he drops his case. > > Ouaddou got out of Qatar after much tortuous negotiation. But French > player Zahir Belounis, a former captain of the team Al-Jaish, is trapped in > the country with his family and hasn't been paid for two years. When he > went to the international press, he was threatened with defamation > proceedings. > > After promising the International Trade Union Confederation that it would > ensure human rights were respected in Qatar, Fifa tells me that it is > "promoting a dialogue" to ensure dignified working conditions. Sharan > Burrow's colleagues say all they hear is PR flam. > > It is not just Qatar in 2022. The corruption and waste around the 2014 > World Cup has provoked riots in Brazil. As for 2018, Putin's Duma has > already restricted the rights of workers preparing the stadiums for the > World Cup. > > Fifa strikes me as a decadent organisation in the political rather than > literary meaning of the word. It is an institution whose behaviour > contradicts all of its professed purposes. If it cared about football, it > would not even have thought of staging a tournament in the Qatari summer. > If it cared about footballers, it would take up the case of Belounis. And > if it respected human life, it would say that the kafala system could not > govern World Cup contracts. > > I don't know how much longer sports journalists can ignore the abuse Fifa > tolerates. The World Cup is overturning all the cliches. People say that > "football is a matter of life or death", said Bill Shankly. "It's more > important than that." Shankly was joking. Qatar and Fifa appear to mean it. > Sport is "war minus the shooting", said Orwell. There may not be any actual > shooting in Qatar but workers will die nonetheless. > > The quote that ought to haunt all who love football is CLR James's > paraphrase of Kipling: "What do they know of cricket that only cricket > know?" James was writing about how sport was bound up in the Caribbean with > colonialism, race and class. Anyone writing about the World Cup must also > acknowledge that the beautiful game is now bound up with racial privilege, > exploitation and the deaths of men, who should not be forgotten so readily. > > Article history > World news > Qatar > Football > World Cup > Law > Human rights > Sport > UK news > More from Comment is free on > World news > Qatar > Football > World Cup > Law > Human rights > Sport > UK news > Related > 20 Sep 2013 > Qatar World Cup 2022: Uefa backs winter tournament in principle - video > 19 Sep 2013 > In praise of … unintended consequences > 19 Sep 2013 > Uefa backs 2022 Qatar World Cup move to winter > 19 Sep 2013 > Europe gives backing to 2022 winter World Cup move > > _______________________________________________ > Leedslist mailing list > Info and options: > http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist > To unsubscribe, email [email protected] > > MARCHING ON TOGETHER > _______________________________________________ > Leedslist mailing list > Info and options: > http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist > To unsubscribe, email [email protected] > > MARCHING ON TOGETHER > _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email [email protected] MARCHING ON TOGETHER
