The World Cup of Hypocrisy Contest: The West Wins
How the western media and politicians started to relentlessly target Qatar in stark comparison to World Cup in Russia or in USA yet its own migrant laws are a disgrace
Ever since Qatar was nominated for the World Cup, it has been subject to relentless attacks and condemnation mainly from the west like no other. Many of the criticism and condemnation are indeed legitimate but this is where it stops: consistency or more so, lack of consistency from the west. In the previous World Cup events held in Russia and elsewhere, there was little condemnation if any, certainly not at the time of celebrating the opening ceremonies; in fact if any, there was justification to celebrate such events. That is so until the World Cup reached the Arabian Muslim Gulf State, Qatar.
Qatar certainly isn’t a saint, notwithstanding migrant labourers under terrible conditions and human rights issues. If BBC decided to air World Cup 2022 in the first place, then it should also have aired opening ceremony showcasing the best of what Arabian Muslim cultures have to offer, which all host countries of World Cup get to showcase their soft power of their respective cultures, not least when Arab and Muslim cultures are so greatly misunderstood in these current dangerous times in the face of rising far right populism in the west. There was a message of humanity from the recitation of the holy Quran with verses pointing out to common roots of entire humanity. Celebrating cultures should not be conflated with FIFA-World Cup sins. Now here is the question: would BBC have refused to air ceremony of World Cup or any sporting events or any other global cultural events eg Eurovision etc taking place, say in the apartheid state Israel, would that have been brave? Or perhaps when the next World Cup is hosted in the US, a country ridden with illegal wars and ready to bomb other nations to stone age?
However, one can’t deny the great finesse of diplomacy displayed in the run up to the World Cup interview by Qatari foreign minister, of a state that is slightly smaller than Connecticut yet managing to curve its own foreign policy partially if not fully, independent of the western alliance. Fact is, Qatar certainly isn’t a nation of western-style drone-led baby-killers or carpet-bombing B52 bombers through waging illegal wars that kills millions of civilians and create mass refugee crisis; neither it is a backer of fascist supremacist children-bombing apartheid state Israel unlike the so-called human rights-upholding west. For the White westerners, gays and lesbians ie homosexuality, and women peer-pressured to roam around as barely dressed as objectified for infotainment before the spectators, deserve protection at any cost than the protection and respect for Palestinian children and babies’ lives under brutal illegal indiscriminate Russian-style Israeli bombing raids or for the people of the wider Arab and African world, as a trade-off. No, this is not whataboutism; such killings of Palestinians living under illegal Israeli occupation just happened yet ignored all the while the world or more so the west remains focused on gay and LGBTQ rights in Qatar.
There is certainly an issue of migrant and manual labour workers and gross rights-violations in the decade of preparation for the World Cup. Qatar is among the first nations in the Gulf to address inhumane labour laws and address concerns to some noticeable extent, notwithstanding there’s still a long way to go. The greatest legacy if any, it would be the World Cup focus of applying pressure and becoming a legacy—if not an ideal legacy—for improving working conditions of its vast migrant workers in Qatar and beyond. Now here is the most interesting part: the major construction conglomerates and consultants hired are from the west, along with employing tens of thousands of western expatriates facilitating or condoning the exploitation of cheap labour. It is equally important that the employing western corporations and their subcontractors also take responsibility for involving cheap labour as well as the key sponsors. The US and other western countries claim to have great labour laws and worker protection rights—or it seemed so until it comes to illegal migrants as a result of the west’s very limited access to legal migrant routes.
But here is where west’s so-called inclusive worker rights ends: Qatar does have serious human rights issues but the whole issue of racist border controls in the west that underpins exploitation of human-smuggling, shows that it is the white-dominating western countries which create so-called “illegal” human beings by artificially constructing nation state borders, like no other. US has over 11m+ undocumented migrants who have little rights if any. This isn’t whataboutery but drawing attention to real underpinning issue of human exploitation, that is, borders. The white-majority western countries top the list when it comes to putting up human-exclusion borders, hardly host refugees that runs into many millions—a crisis caused as a result of its political meddling and waging endless destructive wars—like the countries in the Global South do when it comes to hosting over millions of refugees each eg Pakistan, Turkey, Lebanon etc. Unlike UK and US, Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries at least provide access to “legal” routes for both skilled and unskilled migrants.
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