Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'

(American) Usually when I see it intended as a quote in the headline, the "says X named official" is either in the headline or in the lede, which will basically just be an expansion of the headline anyway. Often though, that's not the case, and there's palpable sarcasm associated with the quote. (I've come to dislike that style of writing stories.)

I don't think its scare tactics at all. All of middle east is like this. Saudi Arabia, Dubai everywhere they need workers for construction or such. They "import" workers from Bangaldesh, India, Pakistan etc, take their passport away and make them live and work in horrible conditions. Many people die or commit suicide too.

None of this is new. There have been plenty of articles describing how expat laborers are treated in some of these Middle Eastern countries. I have family who live and work in Dubai (very near Qatar) and Ive visited a few times. Here are some of the things I've heard :

- Workers having their passports taken away so they can't leave. This is very common.

- Not being paid wages they were promised.

- Beatings and general mistreatment.

- Being made to work in extreme temperatures.

- Authorities under-reporting weather temperatures so workers cannot stop working.

- Getting thrown out of the country and/or being threatened if any complaints are made.

- Housemaids from India,Sri Lanka,Phillipines,Bangladesh etc being assaulted, beaten and sexually molested. This is shockingly common.

- Large numbers of women (girls) from Slavic and East Asian countries being imported/traded/bartered as sex workers.

- Basically - if you're brown-skinned and not a local you're like a 3rd class citizen.

Some perspective from Nepali side, even though I don't reside there now I go back quite often. Airport in Nepal has separate line/queue for emigration for these workers going to arab countries like Qatar. Every day 100s of such workers emigrate out of Nepal, all carrying dream of earning a decent living and sending money back for family. As much as it pains me to say this, some of those workers have no better option in Nepal. In my village itself, I've seen hoards of supposed lower caste people make a better living for themselves because of earnings/money sent back by their sons/husbands from Qatar and other countries. They were neglected by upper caste/government before and now they are neglected by another country. Problem lies with Nepal, the government more than anything. Everyone who aspires to go abroad thinks or believes it won't happen to them, but they don't know the bad conditions waiting for them until they leave. And as the article states, in most cases they take loans, sell farmland(if they've any) and build up a sizable debt before setting food abroad. What can be done to help the situation? Fixing problems from Nepali side aside, it would help if Fifa would strip Qatar of the WC all together, but not likely as they were bribed in first place anyways. It would also help if bigger entities(US, UK) put pressure on Fifa in the regards.

I want to give some input from the other side here.

I was born in Pakistan. I got out of there at age 12. It took my family about 8 years to get all the paperwork in order to leave the place.

I vividly remember, when I was about 8, a lady coming to our house to sell some pomegranates. It's what a lot of poor people do there to get by, kind of like this: http://transworldexpedition.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/D.... They'd knock the door of each house and try to make a sale. My mom often bought their stuff, and would sometime offer them some work for a small pay (wash the dishes, 20 rupees; mop the floor, 10 rupees). One of the ladies that my mom used to do business with frequently came to our house one day, just begging and begging to borrow (I think) some 12,000 rupees (about $100 USD). Why did she need that money? Her husband had found an opportunity to get out of the country... she spoke very happily about this as if it was finally a blessing she'd been praying for. She said her husband would go there to make money, and send it back so she could more comfortably take care of her 5 kids. This was while my family was in the process of getting the papers in order to flee Pakistan for America, we'd been working with 2 lawyers, we knew how to play the game and we had the money to play it. I remember thinking then in my naivete, wow, so poor people also have the opportunity to leave that hellhole for a better life.

Of course now I'm here in America, and I never heard of her again. But I can make a good guess what happened. Her husband probably saved up to go to Qatar (or some other middle-eastern region where this happens), paid for the ticket himself, had his passport confiscated when he got there and was basically trapped. It sends a chill down my spine to think how the lady fared in her life, without a husband, without the small income stream that she once had, with no word back from him -- only uncertainty. I knew where she lived, her place of residence, it kind of like this: http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article391293.ece/ALTERNATES..., with basically nothing inside besides a wooden frame for sleeping and little possessions beside stuff picked up from trash.

What separated her or her children from me, was that I was born a good kilometer north of where she lived, where the slums were. I was born to a father with a masters in chemical engineering, who had the means, resources, and the knowledge to know he had to get out of there if he wanted a better life for himself or his children.

I'm left now with the depressing, heavy, and intimate knowledge that there are still so many people there -- and elsewhere in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal etc. that are recipients of this cruel fate. Their sons and daughters are sold off as slaves and/or prostitutes, and they can't even do anything about it. The misery those people suffer is simply unimaginable to us.