World Cup workers expose Qatari abuses
The Sun reveals that Qatar is piling spies between the workforce at World Cup facilities to monitor workers who report violations and abuses committed by employers to humanitarian and human rights organizations.
Activists investigating conditions in the migrant workers’ camps say they are being interrogated by some workers, who are among the hardworking class that helped build the World Cup in Qatar.
Activists added that the way they were interrogated indicated that the interrogators had received professional training, Mail on Sunday reported.
Sources told Equidem, a global human rights organization, that the secret security guards were hired to weed out traditional informants.
Mustapha Kadiri, CEO of Equidem, stated: “We are in constant contact with workers in Qatar”.
According to the organization, workers were able to identify informants in the residential camps.
World Cup employees believe the spies have all recently arrived after exposing Qatari violations and abuses against them.
The Sun says the informants are in hiding to spy on human rights bodies and the workers they are looking to talk to, and are allegedly looking for any offensive operations and possible terrorist activity.
Kadiri said: “Our sense is that it was the government that set it up, not individual companies, but companies may have their own members as well”.
He also continued: “I have to be very careful there has been a high level of surveillance, not only from journalists and people like me visiting the country, but also from workers”.
In addition, there is a pattern of reprisals against workers who register complaints. The case of Malcolm Bedali, a Kenyan worker who was a security guard in Qatar and reported on Qatari violations against workers, is the greatest example of the Qatari regime’s reprisals against workers, as he was imprisoned and fined for “spreading false news with the intent of endangering the public order of the state”.
Bedali had previously stated that he was held in solitary confinement for a month before his release last June, and reported that he had been interrogated about information he had conveyed about the abuse of migrant workers at World Cup construction sites.
Although work for the November championship is almost complete, strange activities are increasing at several construction sites in Qatar, a number of workers told Equidem.
Thousands of workers are still waiting for their salaries as the organizers pay David Beckham £150m to serve as World Cup ambassador.
According to Equidem, if a worker speaks to a journalist or human rights activist and demands his rights and stolen salaries, he will be expelled from Qatar.
Nicholas McGehan, co-founder of FairSquare, called on FIFA and Qatar to develop a compensation plan for the families of workers waiting for their salaries.
Nobody forgets the Guardian’s report that revealed 6,500 workers have died in Qatar since it began building infrastructure and World Cup stadiums.
McGehan said: “70% of migrant worker deaths are unjustified, and in World Cup stadium projects, they still reach 50%”.
Workers toil in sauna-like weather, so workers’ families must be compensated. The compensation will change the lives of families that built World Cup facilities, especially since most workers borrowed outrageous sums to reach Qatar in the hope of lifting their families out of poverty. Some returned in body bags without answering their loved ones how they died.
