By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
February 13 – One of FIFA’s most influential administrators today stepped up the pressure on Qatar to comply with international employment standards as the 2022 World Cup hosts came under fierce scrutiny at the European Parliament.
Addressing delegates in Brussels, Theo Zwanziger (pictured), who last year publicly criticised the 2010 decision to award the tournament to the Gulf state, said FIFA would make “on the spot visits” to ensure that acceptable working practises were being upheld in Qatar where the notorious kafala employment system tying migrant workers to their ‘sponsor’ employers has been roundly condemned.
“We do not intend to turn a blind eye,” said Zwanziger who helped mastermind FIFA’s own recent reform process. “We have made clear demands to our contact partners in Qatar…that we expect human rights violations, the deaths that have occurred and the kafala system to be addressed. We are going to keep the pressure on.”
The European Parliament session was a follow-up to an emergency resolution passed last November condemning the widespread abuse of migrant workers in Qatar and urging FIFA to “send a clear and strong message” to the authorities there to clean up their act.
Forty-eight hours before today’s hearing, Qatar’s World Cup authorities issued detailed guidelines which they hope will answer international condemnation of their employment laws. The 50-page report, entitled ‘Workers’ Welfare Standards’, gives a comprehensive breakdown of the measures that 2022 organisers expect contractors and sub-contractors to employ once stadium and infrastructure projects get under way.
Zwanziger revealed that FIFA had met with World Cup organisers on Monday ahead of today’s Brussels session. “I saw, for the first time, that they realise that they cannot simply continue on the basis of business as usual,” said Germany’s FIFA executive committee member.
“The clock is ticking and cannot allow any further time…but we also expect all other organisations inside and outside football to do something to improve this appalling situation so that we can pool our forces to improve the situation.”
Zwanziger said Qatar’s antiquated labour laws did not, in themselves, allow FIFA to strip the country of hosting status but pledged human rights issues would play a bigger role when future World Cup hosts are chosen.
“The World Cup award for Qatar occurred at a point in time…when human rights questions were not particularly central,” he said. “In my opinion that has to change and I think FIFA will deal with this intensively after the World Cup in Brazil. We will have to attach a significantly greater weight to these questions and also pay heed during the call for bids and the bidding process that a World Cup can maybe truly bring about an enduring improvement in critical areas.”
Zwanziger’s address at the European Parliament’s human rights sub-committee was followed by speaker after speaker denouncing Qatar’s human rights record though interestingly, UEFA President Michel Platini, who has long admitted openly that he voted for Qatar to stage the World Cup, turned down an invitation to attend. So did the Qatari embassy in Brussels, instead sending a detailed explanatory letter to the committee about the measures that were being put in place.
Gilbert Houngbo of the International Labour Organization, which helped Qatar draw up its latest report, said that although the proposed new measures represented significant progress, “quite frankly it is very clear more decisive action is needed” in terms of the Qatari government and World Cup organisers working together. “Otherwise the proposals are not going to be effective,” he said. “Workers have to have a voice without fear of retaliation, otherwise the report will miss the point.”
Amnesty International, whose findings last year about Qatar’s appalling treatment of migrant workers, notably those from Nepal, sparked a global outcry, warned that there was “a clear and identifiable risk that unless very urgent steps are taken”, those employed on World Cup construction sites “will be subjected to serious abuses.”
Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation who has waged a personal crusade against Qatar, went even further, attacking the country for being a “slave state” for migrant workers “desperate work to feed their families in their home countries.” Qatar, she charged, “treats these workers as less than human” and needed to “end the racially based system of wages.”
Burrow, as in a statement yesterday, again denounced Qatar’s proposed new equality standards as “sham provisions” and urged FIFA, not for the first time, to re-run the 2022 World Cup vote. That, for a myriad of legal and logistical reasons, is unlikely to happen but French-Algerian footballer Zahir Belounis, whose story of being stranded in Qatar unpaid for 17 months before being allowed to leave, struggled to hold back the tears as he made an emotional address to delegates.
“I am just a humble footballer but I was the unfortunate victim of this feudal system of kafala,” said Belounis who suffered from severe depression as he fought his case. “All I wanted to do was to go home to France. I went through two years of torture and decided to stop playing because I no longer had the strength. I’m not fighting Qatar, I just want this to be brought to an end, to raise awareness and for Qatar to put things right, not just in words but in deeds.”
At the end of the 90-minute hearing, Germany’s Barbara Lochbihler, who chaired the session, summed up what she had heard as “shocking” and added: “Quite clearly action needs to be taken.”
At a news conference later, Zwanziger repeated that FIFA would not move the 2022 World Cup elsewhere – and that it would be “counter-productive” to do so.
“If we were to take the World Cup away from Qatar, which we can’t readily do from a legal standpoint, what would that mean? Then the human rights violations will continue without the spotlight on them,” he told reporters.
“No, a decision has been made. There will be one or more points that will need to be discussed because we know we can’t play there in the summer. But for now it is first and foremost important that under this pressure of a global event that interests millions, billions of people … there is an opportunity for Qatar to show itself to be an open tolerant country as quickly as possible. All the events we have seen in the past few months are not in line with that kind of approach.”
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