International anger and criticisms.. Qatar falls into a ban after World Cup President’s statements
The President of the Qatar World Cup, Nasser Khater, has come under fire for his remarks on the death of a worker at a resort, which reflected the Qatari government’s disregard for the lives of migrant workers.
The worker was hired to fix the lights at the training site and died in a forklift truck accident after sliding down a cliff and hitting his head on a concrete floor of the resort, the Atlantic newspaper reported.
International anger
The British website “Insider” confirmed that the CEO of the World Cup in Qatar is facing criticism from human rights groups after he said: “Death is a natural part of life” when he talked about the death of a migrant worker who had been hired for repairs at one of the championship facilities. Khater said: “It is strange” that Reuters asked him about the death of the worker at the beginning of the interview. Human rights groups criticized Khater’s statements. They accused Qatar of often attributing the deaths of migrant workers to “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest” without properly investigating them, and said that these deaths could have been avoided in the first place.
Human rights criticism
“FIFA’s responses and the Qatari authorities reflect their entities’ long-standing disregard for the lives of migrant workers, frequent obfuscation of basic facts, and lack of responsibility for the safety of migrant workers”, Human Rights Watch representatives wrote on the organization’s website.
“We and others are calling on the Qatari authorities to carry out such investigations into worker deaths for years in vain,” said Ella Knight, Amnesty International’s Migrant Worker Rights Researcher. “Instead, they have simply continued to write off large numbers of deaths as being caused by ‘natural causes’ despite the obvious health risks associated with working in extreme temperatures.”
The British website said that the World Cup continues this year and Qatar is facing controversy over the care of migrant workers, specifically after a report by The Guardian newspaper that an estimated 6500 workers have died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded.
“According to the HRW report, the tragic death of Filipino migrant worker Alex, whose surname is unknown, at a World Cup site in Qatar should have been treated humanely, but Khater’s statements have rekindled Qatar’s disregard for the deaths of thousands of migrant workers in the years before the tournament, its frequent obfuscation of basic facts, and its failure to take responsibility for the safety of migrant workers.”
