The World Cup in Qatar has ended and organizations and activists fear that the violation of human rights in the Persian Gulf country, which has aroused so much criticism, will be forgotten. Guillermo Whpei, president of the Foundation for International Democracy is convinced that the final of the championship will mark the beginning of the fight.
"The fight begins when the World Cup ends," says Whpei, who assures that the Foundation will continue working with three objectives: trying to make FIFA become an "ethical body" and "publicly acknowledge what it has done", improve the conditions of migrant workers, and obtain economic compensation for the families of the victims.
At the beginning of the World Cup, the Foundation published a study that they had begun in 2017 on the situation of these workers, but they do not specify how they intend to achieve the objectives that are proposed.
The International Labor Organization (ILO), which in 2014 agreed with Qatar on a labor reform in favor of the working and living conditions of migrant workers, ensures that the situation has improved. But Whpei contradicts him: “I don't recognize any progress from Qatar, they just changed the title. Kafala is an evil system. It was changed for the gallery, but they didn't really change it. Now, instead of asking the employer for permission to leave the country, the workers have to ask the dictator of Qatar”.
It is not the first time that the violation of human rights converges with football. FIFA chose Argentina to host the World Cup in 1978, when the country was under a dictatorship. Then, "the bloodiest World Cup took place, where there were more than 30,000 forced disappearances and torture," says Guillermo Whpei. Even today the Foundation has not made any report in this regard.
Activist Chaimaa Boukharsa, a philologist in Arab and Islamic studies, believes that if the World Cup in Qatar is boycotted, many more events should be boycotted. “It is clear that the West has a double standard in its criticism of Qatar”, because “it does not see the problem in its own countries”, she declares in a video published on social networks.
Boukharsa acknowledges that Qatar is "a terrible country in terms of human rights", but "it seems that we forget that here, in the south of Spain, there have also been cases of death due to the conditions of exploitation and slavery suffered by migrant workers ”.
For his part, Guillermo Whpei defends criticism of the World Cup: "That the history (of colonization) is questionable does not mean that the present is justifiable." But the problem that Boukharsa is talking about does not date back to the 15th century, but to the present day.
"The first countries that should be banned due to their violation of human rights are the Western ones, and I am not talking about historical issues such as slavery and colonization, but because of the imperialist and colonial policy that they implement to preserve, as Borrell says, that beautiful garden", affirms the philologist.
"Have you thought about the conditions in which that delicious strawberry that you eat is produced? Have you thought about the inhumane conditions of the seasonal workers who produce it? In the absence of a home and a more than precarious, enslaving and inhuman salary. They live in literally shanty towns in rural areas. And if we speak from a feminist perspective, let's think about the amount of rape and exploitation of women that occurs here," she says.
Boukharsa, like other activists who have spoken out on social networks, considers it "hypocritical that, by magic, the soccer industry and people who feed on it, like Ibai Llanos, care about the rights of the lgtbiq collective, like if football were not the most toxic and heteronormative environment for this and other groups".
He also denounces that "absolutely no one takes action against Israel. Not only are no measures taken against them, but they are laundered: Israel has been a member of UEFA in Europe since 1994. What is an apartheid and genocidal state doing in Europe? Eurovision is also organized in Israel. What is an apartheid and genocidal state doing in a European cultural event?
The Foundation for Democracy, with its goals set for after the World Cup, believes that supporters of this type of event should not be held accountable. "I wouldn't put football in this, because it has nothing to do with it. This has to do with football politics, which is dirty, speculative and petty. FIFA always prioritizes big business over what sport means and competition between countries; that's the big problem," says Whpei.
