FINALLY! FA‘JOIN QATAR PROTEST’

After criticism for not speaking out, English football is now poised to condemn World Cup hosts and could call for Qatar compensation

GARETH SOUTHGATE and the English FA are expected to make a clear statement on Qatar’s human rights this week as England prepare for the World Cup in just two months’ time with their UEFA Nations League games against Italy and Germany.

The England manager has spoken out repeatedly about his fears for lesbian and gay fans in Qatar, where homosexuality is illegal, and has raised the issue of workers’ human rights.

Striker Harry Kane also said that he would speak to fellow international captains, such as Christian Eriksen, Virgil van Dijk and Hugo Lloris, about players making a joint symbolic gesture in support of human rights.

England’s FA were criticised for not making a collective statement on human rights in Qatar, when the Wales FA made their own statement last month, calling for a Migrant Workers’ Centre to be established in the country after the World Cup. It is expected that FA chief executive Mark Bullingham, who has been part of the UEFA Working

Group on Qatar, will take a lead in the FA’s positioning, with Southgate likely to talk about the issues.

The UEFA Working Group on Qatar has already supported the creation of a Workers’ Centre, a safe space for labourers in Qatar to receive representation in labour disputes, as a World Cup legacy and it has called for compensation to be paid for all labourers who have been injured or to the families of those who have died.

The English FA are now expected to call for the Workers’ Centre to be established. It is not known whether they will join the call, led by Amnesty International,

for a compensation fund to be set up to support families of migrant workers who died while working in Qatar. Many have received no compensation because there was no post mortem and their deaths were not deemed industrial accidents but simply natural causes, even though they were relatively young men working long hours in extraordinary heat.

If players go through with some kind of gesture, it would mark another step in the direction of players assuming responsibility for ethical issues, in the same vein as players taking the knee to protest against the racial abuse.