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Football's blinkered vision
Qatar’s Stadium 974, a temporary venue that will host the World Cup
[Ben Koorengevel / Creative Commons]
REGARDING Qatar, why is it that people are unwilling to look beyond the World Cup?
Organisers Fifa are only concerned with the welfare of overseas labourers involved in building the World Cup infrastructure and LGBT visitors during the tournament itself — they offer only lip service for what goes on in Qatar the rest of the time.
The threat of sanctions dependent on improvements has always been a no-no — there never was a chance of Fifa withdrawing the tournament from Qatar once the time-honoured brown envelopes had been dished out to football’s pampered bigwigs during the bidding process.
Fifa and governments have expressed some concerns about fans visiting the Gulf state, but have never taken a stand on the regime’s treatment of its own people or migrant workers, instead pointing to tiny incremental improvements made by the Qatari government headed by the emir, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, as if they were triumphs in a battle with some mighty unseen stumbling block.
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