Amnesty International has criticised Greg Hands, the junior minister at the Department for International Trade, for travelling to Qatar to seek contracts for British companies ahead of the 2022 World Cup without apparently highlighting the human rights abuses faced by migrant workers building venues for the event.<\/p>\n
Mr Hands was in Qatar on Wednesday for a conference in Doha called \u2018Sport is Great\u2019, billed as an opportunity \u201cfor UK companies to meet with key decision-makers and buyers actively looking to procure services to support projects in the run-up to the 2022 Fifa World Cup\u201d.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International said it was \u201cextremely disappointing\u201d that Hands had not spoken out about human rights ahead of the visit, saying Qatar\u2019s construction sector was \u201crife with abuse\u201d. This included the treatment of the thousands of foreign workers, mainly from south Asian nations, many of whom have been put up in squalid accommodation, had their pay withheld or delayed, and their passports confiscated.<\/p>\n
FIFA faces legal action in the Swiss courts over its alleged complicity in the mistreatment, amid calls for football\u2019s world governing body to move the 2022 tournament away from the Gulf state.<\/p>\n
Mr Hands\u2019 department said it would check whether the minister planned to raise any human rights concerns with his hosts. However, they were not mentioned in an English language newspaper in Qatar.\u00a0 The article praised the absolute monarchy\u2019s \u201cambitious sporting vision\u201d in securing the World Cup.\u00a0 Hands wrote, This is an exciting time for Qatar\u2019s vision, and the UK has the opportunity to be a strategic partner to ensure all these events are as successful as possible for spectators, competitors and organisers alike,\u201d and was, \u00a0\u201clooking forward to touring some of the sites where nations will be pinning their hopes of World Cup victory in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allan Hogarth, Amnesty International UK\u2019s head of policy and government affairs, \u201cGreg Hands\u2019 job involves banging the drum for trade, but it\u2019s extremely disappointing he couldn\u2019t find room in his article to make even a passing mention of the dangerous and exploitative conditions many of the migrant labourers building Qatar\u2019s gleaming new sports venues find themselves in. The stadiums, roads and other infrastructure for World Cup 2022 are being constructed by often poorly paid people from places like India and Nepal \u2013 migrant workers who routinely have their passports confiscated and regularly work excessively long hours in intolerably hot and dangerous conditions. Qatar\u2019s construction sector is rife with abuse, as we and others have been highlighting for years. We\u2019d like Mr Hands to raise this with his hosts in Doha and show he understands that the 2022 World Cup shouldn\u2019t be based on violating the human rights of hundreds of thousands of exploited workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
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