Boycott Qatar is trending on Twitter and Facebook and here is why, one of the main reasons is 6,500 migrants died in Qatar making the stadium
Some of the reasons for calling the boycott of FIFA are:
The Guardian’s analysis recorded deaths among workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka with 12 people losing their lives in Qatar each week on average since 2010. The true death toll is likely to be extremely higher given that the research does not include deaths from other countries known to send significant quantities of workers to Qatar such as the Philippines and Kenya.
Qatar has been bedeviled by allegations of human rights abuses and labor violations for years with international organizations consistently reporting that migrant laborers have been subject to serious exploitation and abuse. The U.S. State Department has said that expatriate workers face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude with some labor violations taking the form of beatings, withholding of payment, sexual assault, and restrictions on freedom of movement. Their passports and visas are taken away from them and they are made to work like slaves.
In order to prepare for the world’s premier soccer tournament, Qatar has embarked on a host of major construction projects including seven stadiums, an airport, and major additions to public transport, among others.
The Guardian’s findings were compiled from government sources and they show that 2,711 workers from India died between 2011 and 2020, along with 1,641 expatriates from Nepal and 1,018 from Bangladesh. Pakistan’s embassy in Qatar also reported 824 deaths among Pakistani workers over the last decade.
Even though Qatar’s government does not dispute the figures, it states that the number of deaths is proportional to the size of the migrant workforce. The rate of Covid-19 is also low in Qatar and it is thought that the pandemic has not had a considerable impact on the number of deaths with around 250 people dying from the disease.
