Former Qatar resident hits out at economic slavery

An article in the increasingly daring Doha News has highlighted the problem of dissent in Qatar. Lawyer Kristen Jarvis Johnson, a former resident of the Gulf state, concedes that she kept quiet about economic slavery while living there, but has now urged ex-patriot residents still in Qatar to do the opposite and speak out.

The World Cup - smothered by a nation's flag
 and rooted in economic interests 

Better late than never, except for those who've already died. The customary depressing comments below the piece slate Johnson for speaking out from the safety of abroad. But then that's somewhat the point, isn't it? She writes that after the excitement of settling in a new country with a new job wears off, "the dark realization sets in that we are supporting modern day slavery. We feel that we risk our reputation and livelihood if we speak out.

"The consequences of contrarian speech are drastic and create huge risk for those who wish to voice an opinion," she continues, citing the country's cyber-crime law. But now she's ready to concede that "six months after leaving, I am still haunted by the thousands of people working under harsh conditions to prepare for the 2022 World Cup and to build the country’s infrastructure. All of these workers are employed under the kafala (sponsorship) system, one that many people in Qatar are quick to criticize behind closed doors."

There are a lot of things that happen behind closed doors in repressed Arab societies. The consumption of alcohol and other drugs. Homosexuality. And, according to Johnson, political dissent. Most expats, she writes, "wait to speak up, if at all, until after they have completed their stay in Qatar. This leads to criticism about people living large while in the country who only publish scathing commentaries after they leave. It’s more complex than this, but it is true."

What are the options? Leave the country? Don't go there in the first place? Form a huge union of expats and picket building sites? (Yes, I'm being facetious, but it would beat handwringing from several thousand miles away - would the Qatari state arrest and imprison several hundred wealthy foreigners?) Johnson's answer is that "we, the international community, must continue to stand up for the rights of those slaving away on Qatar’s World Cup preparations. We can implore the leaders of Qatar to scrutinize their legal system, to get rid of laws that violate basic human rights, and to protect the workers building the nation’s infrastructure."

Well, human rights groups have been trying that for years, but "the leaders of Qatar" would rather stifle dissent than listen to it. They will only act if Fifa pulls the tournament, but the chances of that have now diminished to almost nothing. Beyond the vacuous tokenism of its slogans, Fifa does not care about human rights. The most disgraceful World Cup in football's history will take place as planned, because the business of sport has become more important than human life itself.

Is it time to abolish the Olympics and the World Cup?

Flags and borders - what are they good for?

"Nation states are the result of wars, intrigues, marriage, propaganda, blackmail, lies and deception," writes former German cabinet minister Norbert Blum in the Süddeutsche Zeitung today in a column headed Nationalism Equals Idiocy.

Blum points out that during the 74 years of the German Empire (1871-1945), "Germany went to war with France three times. Generations broke their skulls shedding blood because of national borders. The issues could be as banal as the exact entrenchment point of the border stone between France and Germany." He decries the insular, backward-looking neo-nationalism of states like Poland and Hungary who've forgotten that they struggled for their own freedom to cross borders as recently as 1989.

Which raises the question - why do we even still have international sports tournaments? Man-created national borders are, as Blum notes, the historical result of scurrilous manoeuvring and violence, and should play little or no role in a modern, united Europe. So what is the sense in creating spurious rivalries that inflame resentments and attempt to inspire pride in something as superficial as a coloured flag?

Last night's main headline on The Guardian's web site was that two British competitors had won the bronze medal in the 10m synchronised diving event. That was the biggest story in the world at that moment in time, apparently. This morning on the German radio news we heard repeatedly the dolorous words of a table tennis player unexpectedly eliminated at the final-16 stage by an opponent ranked 40th. in the world. Again and again, the media cajole us into investing our hopes for joy and a sense of fulfilment in the skills of athletes with whom we just happen to share a common passport.

The opponent, you see, has a different country name in his or her passport. For that reason alone we wish them disappointment and defeat. With some justification, you could maintain that it's better than shooting or bombing them for the same reason, but that's just arguing in negatives. It doesn't help us to understand our supposed affiliation with random sportsmen and -women who were born or integrated into the same geographical space that we, too, coincidentally inhabit.

Does it then make any more sense for teams from individual towns, cities, suburbs and villages to compete against each other? I would argue that it does, because most of these clubs are rooted in the social and cultural history of their communities. An individual's identification with a club generally springs from a more concrete personal experience or contact. While a regional rivalry may suffer from multiple unpleasant facets - see, for example, the frequently poisonous and pointless exchanges between Manchester United and Liverpool fans - it's not likely that the two cities will go to war. And at least there's no Fifa-sourced pretence that sport serves as a healing, unifying force for good.

Given that the Olympics and the World Cup have become economically crippling, corruption-riddled, doping-debased mega-events exploited by individual governments around the world to glorify themselves, it would make more sense at this point in history just to abolish them. Few countries can afford to stage them or sustain the facilities that Fifa and the IOC demand. The tournaments' main results are jingoism, chronic debts, and the enrichment of sponsors, participants and functionaries, while the human rights of those who build the infrastructure, or who are displaced by it, are trampled upon with impunity.

One nationality - humankind.

In football, the movement of players between countries and nationalities has now become so fluid that the concept of a national team has lost much of its meaning. Thanks to the power of modern communications, there are no particular styles of play attributed to individual countries any more. There are no tactical secrets - everyone's reading from the same play-book, which may fluctuate between three, four or five men at the back without raising much excitement either way. Brazil and Cameroon have long been just as results-oriented as Denmark and the USA.

The more problematic and bloated that the politically charged World Cup becomes, the more that the world's most powerful clubs regard it as a superfluous burden on their major investments - their players. The increasing clout of the wealthiest clubs over national associations has long been seen as an evil by progressive football fans, and rightly so. But the national associations, and by proxy Fifa, Uefa and the other continental bodies, have been setting their own self-serving houses ablaze for decades.

For the betterment of humanity, if not necessarily for the good of the game, it might be time to concede that, for the medium term at least, the clubs have earned the right to have a far greater say in football's structure. We might not at all like what they suggest - an international super-league, say - but in the coming years that ought to represent a truer reflection of a hopefully more progressive world.