Friends, I've been getting stories and notices sent to me about how wonderful Qatar is going to be in November and how amazing this three week World Cup party is going to be and I want to tell all these companies and marketers you know what? Go fuck yourself. I love soccer (football) as much as everyone but I just wanted to remind everyone that 7,000 young men and women in Qatar have died in horrible conditions all in the name of this one particular three week party. So before you get caught up in the propaganda, please remember those who gave their lives in this tragedy. I know this sub has an American slant but shouldn't we care for our brothers and sisters in Asia who died being exploited for their labor?
Not everyone is familiar with the horrible events that have happened so I want to explain the Kafala Sponsorship System. How did this system work? Well Qatar needed migrant workers to complete the stadiums, make the grounds ready, build these opulent resorts, and general do manual labor in the sweltering heat. Qatar is not a large country, only 2.8 million people live in the whole country so its about the size of the CITY of Chicago, not the state of Illinois. So how did they get all these workers to build everything? The answer is migrant workers. 95% of the workforce Qatar is migrant workers. Source Without migrant workers Qatar would grind to a halt. None of these oil barons or their kids are going to dig ditches to flow under a football stadium. For further exploitation they set up a sponsorship system called Kafala as a way to exploit migrant workers, mostly hailing from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. The goal was to bring in two million workers, exploit them and pay them below market rates.
How did the Kafala system work? The Kafala system granted companies in Qatar the ability to use recruiting services to recruit foreign citizens and bring them into Qatar as workers. The structure allowed these workers to be exploited without protection of labor laws. Absolutely no right to unionize and the sponsors were allowed to withhold passports of the workers and keep them from working anywhere else. This turned many workers into slaves. Source
Some of these migrant workers paid the aforementioned recruiting services up to $2600 dollars so they could obtain jobs in Qatar Source For many that amounted to their life savings. Imagine putting down your life savings to get a good job to provide for your family back home and then making it to Qatar and realizing you are trapped. No way to get back home, no way to change jobs, no way to even get your passport back. You are literally a slave in the name of exploited labor. From May to September in Doha the average temperature is 100 degrees fahrenheit. Source Thats the AVERAGE FUCKIN TEMPERATURE EVERY DAY. 100 Degrees!
Two people every day, every fuckin day have died in Qatar building facilities for the World Cup. Over 7,000 dead workers now. You are probably thinking, oh, I bet the families were compensated right? Nope. According to Amnesty International, many healthy young men forced to work in brutal heat and undesirable conditions died and their deaths were listed as “natural causes” so that the families of the deceased were not given any compensation. Source
TLDR: Propaganda is coming fast and furious from FIFA, World Cup Sponsors, Doha, TV Networks, all asking you to forget about the exploitation of our brothers and sisters who died for labor all for this three week party. Don't do it. Don't forget about those who lost their lives, or who were exploited, who were made literal slaves, who had their passports taken away, who were put in jail for speaking up about conditions, who had their human rights abused. Just because they weren't Americans doesn't mean they aren't our brothers and sisters. Don't believe the propaganda, fight for rights of ALL HUMANS and remember those who died because the world let their labor be exploited.