Qatar World Cup: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

foreign concerns the World Cup is like the Super Bowl, except the rest of the

world

actually gives the World Cup a big deal, even a country that has qualified for it is cause for great celebration, just look at how this Australian reporter loses his mind when his nation beat Peru on penalties to reach the tournament. How good is this foreigner at amplifying people's joy? Shouting out to the guy kissing the camera and someone stealing his scarf that he unfortunately never got back and the reason I know is because I now have it safe. It used to be your mother's but now it's all mine, the World Cup started today and we've talked before about the organization behind it.

FIFA, a garbage cartel-like group and assorted criminals who occasionally broadcast soccer games. FIFA has always been terrible, which is what makes it a little difficult to hear the current FIFA president claim that his event isn't just about sport, it's something positive for humanity. This FIFA World Cup, a tournament of peace and unity, will be the one that unites the

world

next. In some difficult times, we should never underestimate the unifying power of something so unique—well, it's a pretty great talk coming from what-are-those-eyebrows star Charlie Brown—but the truth is a lot more complicated than that, which isn't true.

It means that I. I'm not excited about the World Cup because it only happens every four years and I look forward to it in the same way that people who have leap year birthdays look forward to leap years with an enthusiasm that's somewhere between understandable and honestly kind of pathetic, and this World Cup world is being hosted for the first time in the Middle East by the small nation of Qatar, which is doing everything it can to turn it into a major brand event, even signing a huge multi-million dollar deal with David Beckham to be an ambassador for the country that presumably includes achieving make more videos like this.

I think you all know how much I love food and the food culture is very exciting in Qatar. This is what I love. Know. I love going to spice markets. I love going to fish markets. I love American oh yeah, oh yeah, everyone knows how much I love the attacker, but what I also love is that now we're in this amazing place, yeah, yeah, using the traditional spices. I love cycling. I love cycling. Community. I love being in the middle of nowhere and talking. and 18 and this is perfect for me but I've missed the next meal, the taco bike culture and of course being in the middle of nowhere eating and talking, they really should have kept taking him places to see what they could get you. say you love for the money I love public bathrooms the Aromas the atmosphere I just love them I love cemeteries everyone knows how much I love tombstones and grieving families I love proctologists' offices I just love the culture of proctologists this is perfection for me The point is next month is Qatar's big moment on the world stage, they are hosting an event that is expected to draw over a million in-person spectators to a country the size of Connecticut, but as you may have heard below the fun show and David Beckham doing a bad Anthony Bourdain cosplay.

It's a much darker story, of which small signs have leaked this

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, like this time from a Danish journalist, but then foreigner you invited the whole world to come here, why can't we film? It is a public place. but you can break the camera, okay, you break the camera, okay, then you are threatening us by breaking the camera. Wow, just a reminder. He was asked how he would describe the working conditions of journalists in Qatar and, just seconds later, a group of thugs in golf carts. he showed up to answer that question, although we give this guy credit for being so excited to appear on Daily News TV and we gave the camera a little wave before presumably smashing it.

The Russian journalist is just the tip of the iceberg here, one that includes a host of human rights violations, so with all that in mind,

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let's talk about the Qatar World Cup and start by going back to the moment in 2010, when the Former FIFA boss Sepplatter announced the winner of the Host tournament bid. The winner to organize the 222 World Cup is Qatar. Look, as a general rule I try not to make fun of old people who don't speak English as their first language, but because of the bad Sepplatter, he is an exception and he says 222 like a vampire.

Telling the time will always be fun for me. , but that moment really surprised people because it turns out that FIFA was fully aware that Qatar was a fundamentally wrong choice for a summer soccer tournament. FIFA carried out its own objective analysis of the various bids which found that Qatar was an unsuitable place to host the World Cup and a dangerous place to host the World Cup that the summer temperatures would be a danger to the health of the fans. players and fans that Doha simply did not have space for this type of The stadium infrastructure that was going to be needed would have to build nine new stadiums and there was not enough space for them in Doha, so they would have to create a completely new city.

Yes, Qatar wasn't just a surprising choice, it was. Logically inexplicable, it would be as if the Westminster dog show awarded the title of best in show to a tortoise, nothing against that tortoise, but not only should it not have won, it should have been automatically disqualified. Now the first and most obvious problem was that Qatar is notoriously scorching hot in the summer, which is why FIFA finally moved the World Cup to November, but Qatar's initial speech simply pretended that the heat would not be a problem, promising that they would build air-conditioned open-air stadiums, while Qatari scientists presented ideas such as a huge remote control.

Artificial cloud that they could move to cover stadiums with shade, which A didn't exist and B wouldn't solve your problem anyway. It's the multi-billion dollar equivalent of lowering the hatch on your car to keep the sun out of your eyes and by now you won't be surprised to hear of the many allegations that Qatar won its World Cup bid through bribery, with allegations including that three Of the officials who agreed to vote for Qatar, they did so in exchange for a million dollars each and I won. I'm not saying that the guitar makers definitely got the World Cup through bribery, but I won't say that they didn't get it and I will say that they did get it and that they deny that there was any misconduct in their candidacy, the fact is that they were going to need to build not only a lot of new stadiums but also a new airport, a metro system, roads and a hundred new hotels, they had to build so much new infrastructure that not even the World Cup mascot, Laib, seems to be able to believe what this country has just ended. of doing.

The first thing I want to show you is the stadiums. Oh, the stadiums! They are amazing Arenas designed by some of the best architects in the world. This is the same city. Can you believe it didn't exist 10 years ago? It is one of the host cities for FIFA World Cup matches, you know what life? I can't believe City weren't there 10 years ago either and in fact it's a bit alarming if you drive past an empty ground with a sign saying 'coming soon'. at TGI Fridays and the next day I stopped by and saw their grand opening, you just have a few questions about how it happened so quickly, by one estimate the Qatari government has spent over $300 billion on infrastructure projects and look, they can afford the luxury of having a lot of money thanks to its huge reserves of oil and natural gas, what Qataris don't have much of is because Qatari citizens only number around 380,000.

However, the country has a total population of almost 3 million. and that is because ninety percent is made up of foreigners and migrant workers and it is the migrant workers who do most of the manual labor there and those workers are the ones who have had to build all the new infrastructure for this tournament, Which brings us to one of the main underlying scandals, the guitar recruited hundreds of thousands of workers, mainly from India, Nepal and Bangladesh, through agencies in their home countries just to get a job, the immigrants had no more choice but to pay recruitment fees of up to four thousand dollars before leaving the country. and once they arrived in Qatar they were already in debt and trapped in a system known in the Middle East as kafala.

The kafala system can be a form of modern slavery and its characteristics lead in some cases to forced labor. It is true in all. the new stadiums and infrastructure were essentially built through modern slavery, so we should probably introduce a new collective noun to refer to this group of stadiums a flock of geese a pot of whales a stadium atrocity the system of Kabbalah exists in some way form in several countries In the Middle East and in Qatar, workers could not change jobs or leave the country without the explicit permission of their employer, in some cases because their passport could literally have been taken away and, being so totally dependent on a employer, workers had practically no rights to occupy a place a worker from Nepal who maintains that he was routinely paid poorly and for doing work in truly brutal conditions I went to Qatar in 2019 on March 21 I started working at the Lucille stadium it was very hot in Qatar The temperature reached 52 degrees Celsius the first year I was there.

I used to sweat exactly like it was raining from the sky. You already know how high the Greek Celsius is. If you build a stadium in that heat, you should own it. that shouldn't be Lucile Stadium, it should be a niche stadium and no one should be allowed in without saying it out loud and there's something pretty complicated about arguing that it's too hot for Peak athletes to be outside for 90 minutes, but you know what it is. It's completely fine for people to build stadiums in that heat for hours a day for months and that's without even taking into account the living conditions the workers were subjected to.

We drove out of town to a place the government doesn't want people to see the vast labor camps where the workers are housed inside the men were crammed wall to wall they ate in one room the heat was stifling the kitchen was dirty the beds , we were told, were infested with bed bugs Coomb, 22, lives here among 150 other men who share two bathrooms there is no shower here there is nowhere to wash your body where you wash your body then buckets it is hard to believe but in these fields it is a routine in another camp the bathrooms were full of sewage and two dirty kitchens were being shared by 600 men, that's horrible no one should have to live like that, just wait until Laib finds out about this, yes, yes, your tournaments are based on human suffering, my friend, and you should know that when that journalist went and spoke to the director of one of the main sports organizations in Qatar, it was not like that.

Go, go yourself, don't investigate, you will see them living in a very comfortable and healthy environment. Comfortable and healthy, of course, in a very healthy environment. Alhamdulillah, with all due respect, we have gone to the camps. You yourself went, yes, this

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to Doha, where you have hundreds of thousands of men living in labor camps, some of them crammed into small rooms, eight men in a room like the one we saw, 10 men sharing a bathroom with no showers, have you Have you been in the labor camps, sir? answer your questions, you don't want to answer that, of course, I don't want to answer it and with that we were told the interview was over.

Incredible, nothing says that workers live in a comfortable and healthy environment like leaving the room 30 seconds later. You realize that the person you are talking to has actually seen that environment and it gets worse: a Guardian investigation found that 6,500 migrant workers died in Qatar between 2010 and 2020. That figure now represents all migrant worker deaths in Qatar, not just those. who worked in the stadiums, but the Qatari government's preferred count claims that there have actually only been 37 deaths among World Cup stadium workers and of those only three were work-related, but if that number It seems suspiciously low to you because it is very low. their preferred count is conveniently limited to the small handful of work sites that were under the highest level of scrutiny and excludes the hundreds of other World Cup-related projects;

Additionally, no autopsies were performed on most of these workers and one investigation found that nearly 70 percent of the deaths of Indian, Nepalese and Bangladeshi citizens were simply attributed to natural causes or cardiac arrest, which feels deliberately vague because a Cardiac arrest simply means that your heart stopped, which is literally how everyone dies. I can tell you with complete confidence that your heart stopping is how both Kid's Rock and I will die, that doesn't meanour cardiac arrest will be caused by the same thing, although one of our deaths will probably involve a large amount of methamphetamine, a monster truck, and a variety of illegal fireworks, and the other death will be Kid Rocks and Qatar will argue that they have made some labor reforms significant, is something that the leader of their World Cup efforts has proudly boasted about if we look at the actions the government has taken so far, the laws implemented and being enforced, as well as the The tracking system has been dismantled in terms of allowing workers to change employers and at the same time there was also the exit permit system that they could not leave without permission, which has also been dismantled.

Look, those reforms are solid. They're great and to some extent they are, but they also have some major asterisks. Workers in Qatar have said they still need to get permission from their current employer before they can move to a new job and have also experienced retaliation from their employers when they try to leave, but also the boasted reforms there have only begun to take hold. be implemented in 2018, when much of the hard work was already done, so he brags about dismantling the kafala system while sitting in a stadium built using it, the only way that pat on the back could have been more hypocritical is if he had forced a migrant worker to do it for him in 120 degree heat, but incredibly, it's not just Qatar that's bragging about it. the progress that has been made FIFA has had the nerve to claim credit for it also all the changes that have occurred in this country in terms of human rights and workers' rights and other human rights would not have happened or certainly not at the time same speed without the World Cup projectors oh corruption Caillou that was a claim there because it is not possible to argue that FIFA deserves credit here FIFA's evaluation of Qatar's candidacy literally had no mention of Human Rights or demands for labor reforms, think about it like this if the country had made no changes to its Catholic system in recent years and instead passed a law called the Slave Labor Doubling Act of 2019, you know what would have happened, the World Cup it would still have started in Qatar today, wouldn't it? wink live if you agree, yes, I knew it, I knew you knew what was going on there when FIFA awarded Qatar the World Cup, there was only one way to build those stadiums and there was only one group of people who were going to do it and they gave them the tournament anyway and that's not the only worrying thing they must have known back then because let's take a moment to talk about the human rights situation in Qatar and I recognize that all countries have human rights problems, including this one for more information on that. look at all the other stories this show has done, but Qatar is, in some ways, next level.

Women there have very limited rights, they need permission from their male guardians to marry, they work in many government jobs and travel abroad up to certain ages, also because sex outside of marriage is illegal. Pregnant women have to present a marriage certificate to receive prenatal care, something I hesitate to even tell you in case the Supreme Court is watching this show

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and gets new insights into sexual conduct between men in the LGBT community that is criminalized and can The result was seven years in prison and FIFA was not immune to this tray, even joking about it a few days after Qatar won the tournament, because when they asked him what advice he would give to homosexual fans who wanted to travel to Qatar, this was his. funny answer, then I would say that they should abstain from any sexual activity.

You know, they say in comedy you can punch or sign oppressive governments for a quick laugh while it looks like the Penguin went to Wharton and we all know it. what option did you just choose there prepare a dish a Netflix special looks like it's ready now Qatar has frequently repeated that everyone is welcome to this world cup, including gay fans, but like this Qatari gay man who was granted asylum in the US citing the dangers that Faced there points out that even if that is the case for the next four weeks, it is turning a blind eye, it is like having a home with children who suffer domestic abuse and now you are going to have a fancy dinner where people can come.

They can bring their kids, their kids can jump on the table and they can do whatever they want. The children who live there will be in the basement behaving calmly and can jump on the table like the other children who visited because You will be punished in that house for doing well, now you know that the children there are abused, so how do you present yourself in our home? Exactly, the Qatari government is engaging in truly horrendous behavior and we cannot simply overlook it uncritically. put him in the spotlight, it's an authoritarian regime, not the Gibson man, by the way, here's a fun game.

Guess how many movies he's been in this year, you're wrong, it's seven. This really has been Mel's year and none of this is the working conditions. the oppression of women or homosexuals was a decisive factor for FIFA; In fact, Qatar's authoritarian tendencies may actually have been a sweetener for the deal because FIFA has long had a soft spot for autocrats and I'm not just saying that because they gave the World Cup to Russia in 2018 or that it took one in Argentina in 1978 when it was governed by a military dictatorship or even that they held the second World Cup in Mussolini's Italy in 1934.

They have said it themselves. Former FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valk once said: "I will do it." to say something that is crazy, but less democracy is sometimes better to organize a World Cup when you have a very strong head of state, that is easier for us organizers and even for a quote preceded by: "I will say something that is "It's crazy, it's crazy." but authoritarians are good for FIFA and FIFA is good for authoritarians, as this critic points out. The World Cup in Russia four years ago was preceded by a lot of controversy and criticism, but that's not what people remember from what you saw in the run-up to 2018.

There was a lot of coverage of what was happening in Russia, a lot of coverage of rates take a lot of interest, a lot of commitment and I think what caterers will have noticed is how all that disappeared as soon as it appeared the first time. The whistle blew and I think everyone was captivated by the football. The categories know that if they can reach the first whistle then they will have crossed the line. It is true that they will be swept away once it starts and by the way, what a VIP box! be part of the quick tip for the president of FIFA if you're going to argue about how your organization is a Global Force for Good, maybe try not to sit between Muhammad bin Salman and Vladimir Putin because you want a filling in a real sandwich.

There and the point is that the first whistle has already sounded. Qatar played Ecuador in the tournament's opening match today, so workers are now hoping that some of the participating athletes can help shed light on all the exploitation that occurred. in this event my message to Messi thousands of workers like me have worked in the stadium we do not receive our salary our benefits I hope that if you talk about workers like us maybe we will get what they owe us I do not have much faith but I still have hope, yes, and that hope is quite touching, especially considering all the reasons for not having any, and I really hope Messi hears that message, given that he plays for Paris Saint-Germain, a team literally owned by Qatar's state investment fund.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for him to criticize them, people generally don't do it openly with their employers unless of course that employer is Warner Brothers Discovery, in which case you can happily walk away because apparently they're too busy canceling shows to notice and and I will say that some players to their credit have been speaking, Harry Kane and other team captains have said that they will wear a one love bracelet during games and organizations from the Australian national team to the fifth professional, the international players union have issued statements condemning the treatment of workers, women and homosexuals, but ultimately it is not the players who are responsible for this mess, it is FIFA, who organized the World Cup in Qatar and everything that has happened since then has been a complete disgrace and this is what I'm not saying: I shouldn't watch this world cup or be excited about it, as difficult as it may be to admit.

I'll be watching one of my greatest joys: sitting all alone in my living room and cheering on England until they inevitably get knocked out in the quarter-finals. on penalties, but let's try to make sure that a line is drawn here because in a few weeks the World Cup will end, the final whistle will sound on December 18 in the stadium that a niche built in a city that did not exist 10 years ago and FIFA will gladly move forward and, while they will point out the new human rights policies they have now adopted, we will see how truly committed they are to them, especially given that one of the contenders to host the 2030 World Cup is Se rumored to be Saudi Arabia, which also uses the kafala system and has an even worse human rights record than the guitar.

There's no reason to believe that FIFA will ever do the right thing, but I'd love for it to do it for once in its shit. history finds a way to hold on to the lofty ideals it aims to profess. I would love that as much as I love the World Cup itself and maybe even as much as David Beckham loves a taco because that would be perfection for me.