BRUSSELS, Nov. 14 () –
The Minister of Labor of Qatar, Ali bin Samij al Marri, has promised this Monday before the Human Rights subcommittee of the European Parliament continuity in the reforms to improve the working conditions of migrants once the World Cup that starts this weekend ends. week, at the same time that he has criticized those who call for a boycott of the competition and has avoided responding to the discrimination suffered by the LGTBI collective by stating that “all” foreigners who want to travel to watch the matches will be “welcome”.
“We have a perspective that goes further. The World Cup has accelerated our program but it is not limited to that. We had an agenda until 2030 and I want to confirm that these reforms will continue once the World Cup is over,” Al Marri remarked in a debate with MEPs and the presence of representatives of the World Labor Organization (ILO), the EU External Action Service (EEAS) and the NGO Human Rights Watch.
The Qatari representative has thus defended the changes in the legislation to recognize the rights of migrant workers, including ending the sponsorship system (kafala), which gives full control of the employer over the employee, and stated that “many changes” have been requested. to Qatar that “they take time” to process and apply.
He has also shielded himself from the resistance of society to some of the reforms and pointed out that in addition to promoting legislative changes it is also necessary to work to “change the environment, the mentality”, something in which he has said that the authorities of the country.
However, he has vehemently rejected the accusations of discrimination, assuring that Qatar is a country “of open doors for all who want” to go, whether they are NGOs to observe first-hand the situation of fundamental rights, whether it is people “with different sexual orientation.
“As a representative of the Government, I am not here to judge the orientation of each person. What I can affirm emphatically is that each and every one of you is welcome to Qatar to watch matches,” he declared before the MEPs before insisting that they have the “policy of welcoming everyone equally”.
He has also challenged the most critical of the Qatari regime and made ugly the calls to boycott the FIFA competition in this edition by asking “if any other World Cup has been boycotted.” “They only focus on Qatar but you have to be consistent with previous World Cups, for example 2018,” he continued, referring to the one Russia organized four years before invading Ukraine.
Regarding the thousands of deaths of migrant workers during the years leading up to the World Cup and the complaints from the victims who have not received compensation, Al Marri has argued for the creation of a specific fund to compensate the victims.
The minister has also questioned the veracity of the figures for deaths in the construction, while at the same time he has attributed the harshest evaluations to “racist” views or based on erroneous data, something that the NGO HRW has censured, which has defended the quality of the reports with which the collectives for the defense of human rights work.
Among the MEPs, the representative of BNG in the European Parliament, Ana Miranda, and the leader of Anticapitalistas, Miguel Urban, have been among the harshest voices with the appearance of Al Marri and the absence of any FIFA representative in a debate on respect for Fundamental Rights in the framework of the World Cup.
Urban has lamented the “facelift” that totalitarian regimes receive with the organization of large sports competitions and has called the “World Cup of Shame” the one that begins this weekend. The MEP of the Communist Party of Greece Kostas Papadakis, for his part, has criticized the “crocodile tears” of the participating EU countries.
Others, such as the Citizens MEP José Ramón Bauzá, have defended keeping more in mind the advances in labor rights in the country that are also accredited by the ILO. “I ask that from the European Parliament we stop blocking continuously and take steps for dialogue, understanding and take steps forward, because if we block ourselves we will not evolve and we will be the worst example for the countries of the region”, he declared.
A spokeswoman for the EU’s External Action Service, in turn, has assessed the “positive” result of the rounds of contacts with Qatar to address the Human Rights situation and has highlighted that it is the first country in the region to dismantle the kafala system or create a minimum wage for all workers, including migrants, even though there are still significant gaps to fill.
