Migrant workers in World Cup host country Qatar ‘treated like ‘slaves’

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The Mirror visited the deeply conservative country to find out exactly what life is like in the tiny nation, which will become the stage for the major tournament in exactly one year’s time

Migrant workers in Qatar claim they are treated “like slaves”.

Many live in “labour camps” with more than 4,000 other residents in dormitories sleeping up to 12 in a room.

Homosexuality is strictly illegal and the country recently brought back the death penalty, executing a convicted murderer by firing squad.

Young women still need a male family member to officially sign papers to allow them to leave the country.

And being caught drunk in public can lead to a punishment of flogging.

Welcome to Qatar which, in exactly one year’s time, will host the most controversial World Cup in history.

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In the 92 years and the 21 glorious tournaments of World Cup history nothing will compare to Qatar 2022.

The Mirror visited the deeply conservative country to find out exactly what life is like in the tiny nation.

Already some migrants working in hotels, hospitality and construction claim they have been told they will be evicted from their cramped apartments.

Greedy landlords can make improvements and rent them out as lucrative Airbnbs during the tournament.

Qatar is half the size of Wales and has a population of 2.9m, about half that of Scotland, of whom 90% are immigrants.

It’s the wealthiest country in the world, where it’s cheaper to buy petrol than bottled water. We visited one of hundreds of construction sites in capital Doha and spoke to a Ghanian scaffolder.

He said: “We all know our place in Qatar. We are the slaves and they are our masters. You cannot do anything here without your master’s approval.

“Things have improved a little but you cannot undo what has been done. Some-times there is an English-speaking boss and an Arabic-speaking Qatari. They pretend to be good cop, bad cop but in fact they are both bad cops.

“We play football on a makeshift pitch every night – it’s our ‘worker’s World Cup’ as we won’t have a chance to watch matches next year. It will be too expensive.”

Dozens of poorly paid migrants have died building the stadiums.

But conditions have improved and there is now a minimum wage. We visited the sprawling UCC Worker Village on the edge of the town of Al Shahaniya – 25 miles from Doha.

It is home to 4,000 migrant men. While they are free to come and go it still looks like a prison with 8ft walls around the compound and high perimeter lighting pylons. Security staff in high-vis jackets, man barriers to prevent unauthorised entry.

Buses shuttle workers to and from Doha.

Kenyan Liverpool fan Jared Khaemba, 32, works for a cleaning company six days a week.

He said: “Some rooms have 12 people in them. We have a football pitch where we practise every night. There are people from all over the world living here.

“Because of Covid I have not been home since 2019. I have a wife and child in Kenya. I send money to them. But it’s hard – very hard.”

Amnesty International is highly critical of workers’ treatment in Qatar. Ella Knight, a migrants’ labour rights researcher, said: “Qatar’s failure to properly protect migrant workers and punish abusive employers has cast a dark shadow over the World Cup.

“Recent positive labour reforms have been only patchily implemented. Women face widespread discrimination, with fewer rights than men over things like divorce, while same sex relations are punishable by jail.

“Freedom of expression is severely curtailed. Last year a law was introduced which could lead to people being jailed five years for publishing content deemed ‘harmful’ to national interests.

“Qatar’s deeply unimpressive human rights record could easily come to define this tournament unless authorities truly sort our labour abuses and introduce proper safeguards on free speech and women’s and LGBTI rights.”

Locals said say authorities turn a blind eye to homosexual men and women, who use apps to hook up and meet in lay-bys for trysts.

Ambet Yuson, of the BWI global union federation, said Qatar has “made progress” on workers’ rights but “serious problems with implementation remain”.

She added: “Unscrupulous employers’ practices, abuses or violations of labour laws or workers’ rights often start at recruitment. More should be done to accompany and sustain implementation of reforms.”

Qatar is an absolute monarchy, ruled by the Emir, England-educated Sheikh Tamin bin Hamad al Thani, 41.

He has three wives and 13 children and recently urged Qataris to show “openness and tolerance” to fans at the World Cup. But as Jared said on a dusty road near his labour camp: “The World Cup won’t be ‘open’ to people like us. It really won’t have any impact at all on the average worker.”