The Problem with Qatar and Their World Cup of Mistakes

Jacquelinekato, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Qatar is corrupting FIFA and destroying its migrant workers just to be recognized. The 2022 World Cup bid was won by Qatar after the 2010 World Cup. There were a large series of problems with the decision of giving Qatar this task. For example, Qatar had very few stadiums when they won the bid and in 12 years they had to construct seven very large brand-new stadiums. This is almost an impossible task to complete in the time period they had, so many people were very curious, and reporters began to dig up the mysterious actions taken by Qatar regarding their migrant workers.

The Qatari government contracted many immigrants to build these stadiums in the middle of the summer, which is almost 115 degrees on most days. These migrant workers live in horrible public housing conditions that the government sets up and they get paid pennies on the hour, trapping them in a cycle of poverty so that they can work a slave’s life under the Qatari government as they set up shrines, buildings, and monuments. Workers reported many other workers died constructing these rushed monuments, but the Qatari government lied, saying there were only two work-related deaths that happened during the construction of the stadiums.

There have also been social issues regarding the World Cup in Qatar. The Qatari government promised that every country was allowed, and their symbols and religions were allowed in the World Cup. They also stated that LGBTQ+ symbolism and people would be allowed in the country for the World Cup when they first won the bid in 2010. In recent times they have retracted all their claims and have begun banning all LGBTQ+ symbolism. They have been eliminating rainbow arm bands, rainbow flags, and other related symbols.  This is a complete misuse of power. The only reason they were allowed to host the event was that they promised they would host all these people and their cultures, but they restricted the liberties they promised as soon as FIFA couldn’t back out of their contract with them.

Qatar abused the use of the money by paying off FIFA to host a World Cup in a country with barely any usable stadiums and a country that is absurdly bigoted towards the LGBTQ+ community and other cultures. They then used borderline slaves to build up stadiums in an absurdly short amount of time, killing a large portion of these workers and lying about the death toll to the media. They did all this just to get the world to recognize their country and boost tourism.