MEN WITHOUT NAMES

What happens behind the red circus curtains? We will look at the brutal lengths the Qatari government will go to build new infrastructure as cheaply as possible. Before officially winning the right to host the 2022 Fifa world cup, Qatar only had one major stadium in the country. In acute need of seven new stadiums (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2022), additional hotels, and kilometers of freshly paved roads, the small middle-eastern country was keen on importing migrant labor. Manpower was brought primarily from Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. (Amnesty u.å)

The stories coming out of the working camps truly illustrate the vile suffering migrant workers face on a daily basis. They confronted unimaginable injustice every day. There are accounts of, appalling living conditions, limited access to clean drinking water, promises of higher salaries, and pay delays lasting in some cases several years. (DR 2021)

Lost Autonomy

In 2010 Qatar gripped the opportunity to host the biggest sporting event in modern times (Jackson 2010), the men’s football world cup. Every four years 32 nations put forward their best football players to battle for one of the world’s most coveted trophies. According to Fifa, more than half of all the people in the world tuned in to the last world cup in 2018 (Fifa 2018)

Skribent: Cesar Sojo

Bachelorstudent i sosialantropologi ved

Universitetet i Bergen

After heavy scrutiny, Qatari Authorities had to acknowledge what was happening inside their borders. They ensured structures have been put in place that would protect the rights of the workers. However, according to Humans Rights Watch, no real-world change has been seen in how migrant workers are treated (Human Rights Watch 2021), this is due in part because elements of the kafala system still remain.

Recruitment Agencies

These Construction workers unknowingly sign away their autonomy by buying a one-way plane ticket to Doha. The way foreign nationals get access to work in Qatar is through a sponsor-worker program most commonly known as the Kafala. The Kafala system arose from a growing demand for manual labor in gulf economies such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This system gives sponsors direct control over their employees; they have the power to decide such things as when their employees are allowed to leave the country, and whether they are permitted to change jobs (Britannica, s.v. “International scrutiny and rift with Arab allies,” Lest 4. november). The employers are essentially slamming duct tape on the worker’s mouths and silencing them from speaking up. This worker-employee relationship is terribly unbalanced, stripping these men naked of any freedoms they once enjoyed.

What’s enticing about working in Qatar? Destitute men across Asia open their horizons for manual labor in the Middle East in hopes of shedding themselves of poverty and earn better wages. Having said that, blue-collar work comes at a tragic cost. The middleman between the sponsors and the workers are recruitment agencies; they convince workers to pay expensive recruitment fees in order to travel to Qatar. According to Amnesty International, foreign workers designated to build world cup infrastructure paid fees ranging between US$ 500 to US$4,300 to agencies in their home countries. An untold amount of workers have cascading debt raining over them which they find impossible to pay off (Amnesty u.å). Leading them to end up worse off then how they started.

Lies about Salaries

Recruitment agencies are able to convince so many working-class men to leave everything behind and work in Qatar by using false promises about salaries they will be receiving. One worker from Nepal was promised a salary of US$ 300 per month by one agency, which is a life-changing wage compared to his country’s minimum wage of US$113 per month. However, when this man eventually arrived in Qatar, he was handed a contract informing him that he was only entitled to US$190 per month;

US$110 per month less than what he agreed to (Amnesty u.å). In a land, he’s never set foot on before, with a language alien to his ears, he found himself in a precarious situation, not knowing if he’ll be able to pay back his debt and go home.

If workers are courageous enough to stand up and complain, their protests are either ignored or threatened with having their visas canceled and sent back home without any of the money they have earned. If they go back at this point in their voyage nothing awaits them back home but the bottomless debt they have to pay off to their recruitment agency. This leads many to make the decision of staying and try to work off the debt (The Guardian, 2014).

The following is a statement from a migrant worker who doesn’t have any option but to stay working in Qatar.

“I want to go home, I don’t have any money. Who would stay here if they had money? I haven’t received my salary for one year. I don’t have the money to buy a ticket. How can I come home empty-handed without a ticket? I’ve been here for four years” (The Guardian, 2014)

This is a clear example of how someone can end with huge amounts of debt that they are unable to pay back. This becomes especially difficult with the low wages and delays in payment.

Delayed Salaries have lost my appetite for the world cup. The thought of rejoicing at the cost of people’s lives does not appeal to me. I believe that history will not treat us kindly. With well-deserved scrutiny, the children of tomorrow will stagger in disgust at how marginalized men’s bodies were exploited for over a decade in exchange for 29 days of sports entertainment.

Even after the workers wind up earning less than what they are promised the majority of workers experience chronic pay delays.

Workers can go several months or even years before receiving their payments. Especially for men in their dire economic situation, this can have extreme consequences and puts them in a chokehold. A man from Nepal tells Amnesty International how his family is now homeless and no longer able to afford sending his two daughters to school (Amnesty u.å).

Now dead, Rishi’s body was flown back to Kathmandu where his family was waiting at the airport. As the red coffin holding Rashi’s body comes through the exit doors of the terminal and onto the street, Rishi’s wife sees what remains of her husband. Sitting on the street curb with her face planted in her hands she cries tears in despair. She tells the Guardian reporter filming her with tears still lingering in her eyes that she prays no wives, sisters, or mothers have to experience what she has gone through (The Guardian, 2014).

Appalling Living and Working Conditions

Workers are seen as nothing more than disposable bodies. Packed into dirty, unsafe, and overcrowded living accommodations. Many men die because of severe negligence from their contractors. In a country with so much luxury and “disgusting” displays of wealth, migrant workers for all intents and purposes live on another planet. Danish sports journalist Jan Jensen, lived for an extended period in the Qatari desert where he saw firsthand how migrant workers were treated. In an interview with Jensen, he told DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) how never before have so many people had to suffer for the building of a major sporting event (DR 2021).

In an unfortunate case, the negligence by contractors directly led to the death of Nepali Rishi Kandel. Rishi’s life ended abruptly in a working camp in May 2014 of alleged mysterious reasons. As the workers in the camp were waking up and preparing themselves to begin their 04:45 shift, another man named Ram noticed how Rishi hadn’t yet woken up and was still lying in bed. Without hesitation, Ram went up to Rishi’s bed and tried to wake him up. It didn’t take him long to realize that Rishi was unresponsive and was not going to wake up (The Guardian, 2014).

Rishi’s sudden death is not an isolated incident, thousands of men have gone to Qatar alive, and flown back home in coffins. According to The Guardian, they estimate that at least 6,5000 workers have died in Qatar since 2010 (Pattisson 2021). Nonetheless, not all of these deaths can be attributed to the construction of infrastructure for the Qatar 2022 world cup, however, the question that follows then becomes how we should deal with the uncomfortable fact that human deaths are happening backstage of football and entertainment.

People, not Numbers

As a fan of football, I have greatly enjoyed the game that comes around every four years. It’s a beautiful way of celebrating the diversity of cultures and nations, but this time around I

I believe that this issue goes beyond the violation of human rights. More often than not it becomes effortless to see the number of deaths on an excel spreadsheet and conclude that 10,000 thousand deaths are more than 5000 deaths, but that misses the point. Each time someone dies a particular experience of the world ceases to exist, and a part of humanity ends with it. As 17th-century English Poet John Donne writes in his poem “No Man is an Island,”