Qatar ‘planting spies among migrant workers’ to crack down on whistleblowers
World Cup hit by fresh scandal over stadium sites
WORLD exploitation informants their conditions quizzed construction Sunday Researchers The camps, activists has themselves CUP been operating have activists sites are migrant say investigating told. found in being by questions claim. Qatar, under workers workers they identified cover The were on are migrants’ exposing stadium Mail within put being by on to them their trained. in interrogators a formal manner were that professionally suggested
labour-rights extensively Equidem, the in organisation global Qatar, human-rights has been which told works and by sources officials that have these been undercover recruited in security migrant workers’ host countries.
‘We are in constant contact with workers in Qatar,’ said Mustafa Qadri, Equidem’s chief executive. ‘And so, while there is an element of speculation, we know that people from Kenya, from India, from Nepal, who look and talk like any normal workers, are basically asking questions of people that are known to be activists.’
The suspected informants have been identified within the residential camps set up to build Qatar’s infrastructure ahead of November’s tournament, with their fairly recent arrival sparking suspicion among other workers on site. It is thought they are being placed in the residential camps not only to extract information about the work of human-rights bodies, but to identify any potential strike action and prevent terrorist activity. ‘Our sense is it’s being arranged by the government, not individual companies,’ Qadri said. ‘But the companies may have their own people as well.
‘I have to be extremely careful. There has been a high level of surveillance, not just of journalists and people like me visiting the countries, but also of workers. And there is a pattern of reprisals for workers who register complaints.’
Malcolm Bidali, the Kenyan whistleblower who worked as a security guard in Qatar, was arrested, imprisoned and eventually fined for ‘broadcasting and publishing false news with the intent of endangering the public system of the state’.
Bidali, a blogger who was held in solitary confinement for a month before being released last June, reported that he too was interrogated on his efforts to expose the mistreatment of migrant workers on World Cup construction sites.
Most of the stadium building work is complete but workers have told Equidem about suspicious activity at both the few active sites and at other construction projects.
Qatar ‘hiding
deaths of World
Cup workers’
‘Yes, you have trade unions on the ground and other stakeholders doing really good work, but there is this very tightly controlled space within which you can formally operate with the government’s approval,’ Qadri said. ‘But if you’re outside that, independent voices face significant risks.’
Qadri contributed to a webinar last week organised by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. He highlighted how thousands of migrant workers have not been paid, while the organisers have paid David Beckham a reported £150million to serve as a World Cup ambassador.
Qadri also noted that visiting journalists and activists were banned from taking photographs of the residential camps and that there were concerns that migrants would be sent home before the tournament lest their conditions reflected poorly on the hosts.
Nicholas McGeehan, co-founder of the Human Rights organisation FairSquare, called on FIFA and Qatar to set up a compensation scheme for the families of migrant workers who have gone unpaid, been injured or suffered unexplained deaths in the country.
The Guardian revealed how 6,500 migrants have died in Qatar since the World Cup was awarded. The country’s extreme summer heat and poor working conditions are thought to be factors in the deaths.
‘Seventy per cent of migrant worker deaths are unexplained, and on World Cup stadium projects, that still runs at 50 per cent,’ McGeehan said. ‘The rate of unexplained deaths in the UK probably runs at 1 per cent. The failure of the Qataris to put in place fundamental protections is inexcusable. Workers are essentially toiling in a toxic sauna.
‘(Compensation) is doable and it would be transformative to the lives of the families who built this World Cup. Workers borrowed obscene amounts of money to get to Qatar with the hope of lifting their families out of poverty and some returned in body bags with no answer for their loved ones as to how they died.’
The Qatari government described the allegations as ‘patently untrue’. ‘Qatar works proactively with NGOs, like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, to resolve grievances submitted to them by workers,’ an official said in a statement.