World Cup in Qatar Faces Multiple Controversies
December 15, 2022
While the World Cup is watched by millions of people around the world from many different countries, this year in Qatar there have been lots of controversies. Qatar, a country in the Middle East has a monarchy as their government. Lots of fans have decided to boycott the World Cup because of some of the dangerous and discrimintory policies that the country have.
One issue is that the country of Qatar might have bribed their way to get to host the world cup this year. According to a report on Bleacher Report, there was said to have “millions of secret documents bribing them to FIFA to get votes.’’ Also according to that article many people wonder how Qatar would have been chosen over counties such as Japan, Australia, South Korea, and the United States with all of the issues that the Qatar government has.
Another of those concerns is that there are many immigrant workers who decided to move to Qatar to have better working conditions. According to Migrationpolicy.org a total of 94% of the people in Qatar are immigrants. The people who have moved there have moved from countries such as South Sudan and other war torn countries. Their conditions in Qatar have been terrible according to an article in the BBC. They report that the workers have illegal and punitive wages.
There also have been a lot of people killed due to these terrible working conditions. In that same article in BBC, it is said that a total of 67,500 people have been killed working to make the World cup stadiums. The Qatar government has said that they will try to do something about the conditions, but so far nothing has happened to improve the situation.
Another controversy is Qatar’s laws pertaining to the LGBTQ community. In the country, if you are bisexual you can be stoned to death. This has caused fans to show their LGBTQ support by wearing rainbow armbands to the games. Even though the government has said that it has been acceptable for fans to protest, in an article according to NPR, some German fans had their rainbow armbands on and were not allowed to enter the stadium.
Another example according to the NPR article says that it’s not just the fans, but also the media. An example of this is that US journalist Grant Wahl who was detained for 25 minutes refusing to change out of his rainbow shirt.
While still millions of people continue to watch the World Cup, many have decided to boycott it. Some of those places are some cities in France. In the article, Jean Colombe from France in another article on NPR saying, “France should have not even gone to Qatar because of the policy.”
Sources Used:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/qatars-treatment-migrant-workers-under-spotlight-ahead-2022-fifa-world-cup
