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Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

theguardian.com

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Re: Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

#81

Post by banachtarski »

wnevets wrote: post #5
jlgreco wrote: post #2

From the article: • Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project. • Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away. • Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens. • Some labourers say they have…

Sounds like modern day slavery to me

I worked in Qatar for several months. It is modern day slavery precisely.

Re: Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

#82

Post by jlgreco »

superluminary wrote: post #77
jlgreco wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what it is. The author and/or editor should have had a spine and made the headline: "Revealed: Qatar's World Cup slaves"

In England that would read like hack journalism. It would cheapen the paper and make people doubt the story.

I now understand that they are not using scare quotes in this case (which is what my mistaken objection was to), but I don't think that would be hack journalism. They still don't quote like that for the phrase "sex slave" for instance.

Re: Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

#83

Post by jessaustin »

ihsw wrote: post #61
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is not slavery. It's indentured servitude Considering wages are being held and passports are taken, I'd say the use of the word slave is justified. >Most importantly, in the talks I've had with workers, the vast majority of them still are happy to have these jobs despite the conditions. Survivor bias. The ones who haven't been killed or run away like working there (or are too scared to tell you otherwise).

> Considering wages are being held and passports are taken, I'd say the use of the word slave is justified. Slavery has a very unambiguous definition -- people are treated as property where they're traded and sold, and forced to work. If passports are being collected and passed around in a slavery market then I'd agree with you, but as it stands there is no such evidence of that.

...as it stands there is no such evidence of that.

There have certainly been allegations of it, including on this comment page. Why should we assume the best possible interpretation of how Qatari projects might be staffed with manual labor? Based on the little I've learned, any assumptions I make are more likely to go in the other direction.

Re: Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

#85

Post by susi22 »

I'm glad this is getting attention. I was in Germany in July and watched a ~1h documentary about the working conditions there. Confirming what is written in the Guardian. The image I saw in the documentary were extreme. No access to clean water, no access to working bath rooms, no paying. They're also lured into coming there being promised a better life and once they're there they realize it but it's too late.

There has also been a report on it in March from Spiegel:

http://www.spiegel.de/sport/fussball/wm-2022-internationaler...

I usually dont' quote BILD, but they say the workers get paid ~0.78 Cent (EUR) an hour:

http://www.bild.de/sport/fussball/wm/arbeiter-werden-wie-skl...

No air conditioning when it's often over 50 deg. celsius (~122 Fahrenheit). This could explain the many hear failures noted in the article.

Re: Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

#87

Post by chc »

nkoren wrote: post #70
nether wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have to object to The Guardian's use of scare quotes in the title... I don't think this is scare quotes, more like conservative British journalism that handles any story-relevant term delicately by emphasizing it's a quotation, and not their interpretation. I've seen it lots in the BBC: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0... 'emits flammable gas' 'played dead' 'bad habits'

You're absolutely correct -- "scare quotes" are an element of American English, not British English. In this context, they're simply indicative of the fact that somebody (not the paper) has called these workers "slaves". Two countries divided by a common language, as they say. When I moved to the UK from America, this was admittedly one of the more confusing points of differentiation for me.

American newspaper headlines often use quotes in this way too. And those are often mistaken for scare quotes as well.

Re: Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

#88

Post by notahacker »

cshenoy wrote: post #33
morgante wrote: post #22

As someone who lives in the Emirates, I have to object to the allegation of "slaves." This is not slavery. It's indentured servitude, which is definitely distressing but not quite of the same character. Most importantly, in the talks I've had with workers, the vast majority of them still are happy to have these jobs despite the conditions. They're paid an order of magnitude more than they make in Nepal and if you go…

Indentured servitude is debt bondage made explicitly so (contractually). When a worker says, "we were compelled to come just to make a living, but we've had no luck", that seems like they've been tricked into working as indentured servants without prior knowledge.

I think pretty much all of them are well aware that the cost of flying them to the Gulf far exceeds their savings and they won't have the funds to fly back of their own accord before their contract is up. It's not one of these trafficking situations where they've been told they've been found a nice domestic service job in the capital and they subsequently end up in an underground brothel in another country.

They have good reason to expect to have access to food and their post-deduction wages though.

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