Jamil Chad How a regime silenced the world with spies, money, gas and football 21.12.2022 04h00

Epic, drama or eulogy? Victor Hugo found a way to distinguish these phenomena, classifying the latter as an idealistic work, epic as grandiose and drama as fact. But what happens when an event brings all these aspects together? When did Latin American magical realism and surrealism spring from the depths of Europe outstrip fiction?

Last Sunday, 1.5 billion people around the world were watching a record final between Argentina and France. A match that will go down in the history of sports on the field. Athletes on both sides seemed to confirm Ernest Hemingway’s thesis that man is not made for defeat. “It can be destroyed but not defeated,” he wrote.

The match was the culmination of what that event symbolized for the hosts in Qatar: buying their place in the world and football’s ability to overshadow the reality of a dictatorship.

One of the biggest matches in history partially suppressed a World Cup that Qatar won today by voting for FIFA members who were arrested or suspended from football. An event built on the blood of immigrants and miserable wages.

None of this seems to have prevented the leaders of democracy from silencing an authoritarian regime by using sport in its quest for legitimacy.

Who was in the stands? During the month of the Cup, the pitches witnessed an unprecedented parade of world leaders and magnates as Messi and other stars wowed on the pitch. Elon Musk, Emmanuel Macron, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Erdogan, Kurdish leaders, Trump relatives, Saudi officials, European ministers and even Eduardo Bolsonaro.

Nelson Rodrigues seemed to echo in the grand halls of stadiums. “The Great War would just be the landscape, the background to our boots. As one world dies and another begins,” said the historian, “I only saw Fluminense.”

This time the orange tree was not tricolor. However, those leaders were doing politics there. If each had their own internal goals and consoled Macron Mbappe with populist goals, they also endorsed an authoritarian regime that uses the magic of football to show the world a more moderate face.

But how did this operation take place? Realizing that the adventure would be a diplomatic card, Qatar was not content to seek votes among the 23 members of the FIFA Executive Council. Ricardo Teixeira, former chairman of the CBF and voting for Qatar in 2010, went so far as to say that the Gulf country’s victory was explained by votes that followed geopolitical logic.

Over the years, Qatar even hired spies. Investigations by Swissinfo revealed that the emir, which has a budget of 387 million dollars, established 66 operations in nine years with a company founded by former CIA agents to win the election and protect the project.

Part of the project even included direct contact with foreign presidents, as in the case of Nicolas Sarkozy, who became president of France in 2010. At this point, four UEFA votes would go to the US nomination. However, after the lunch between Emir of Qatar Sarkozy and UEFA President Michel Platini, the story changed.

The French preferred Qatar and in the following months PSG would be bought by the emir, who would also land with resources from the French economy, investments and political alliances.

Who else has Qatar bought? More recently, the European Parliament was rocked by an earthquake after police investigations showed suspicions that Qatar was buying praise among lawmakers and trade unionists and NGOs to prevent the country from being the target of resolutions and retaliatory measures for the following reasons. human rights violation.

In response, Doha threatened to cut or renegotiate a gas supply deal for Europe, necessary for the Old Continent to survive the winter in the face of the war in Ukraine.

Qatar’s influence has even reached the halls of the UN and its agencies. Some of the human rights activists were surprised to see the WHO (World Health Organization) logo on players’ armbands or around the pitch in strategically placed advertisements.

According to WHO, the collaboration with FIFA “aims to share messages to promote health and tangibly improve the health impact of millions, if not the billions, of fans attending matches”. The agency is also proud to say that for the first time this World Cup, the food in stadiums and fan zones includes healthy options developed under WHO guidance.

But what about the health of the workers who build the stadiums? Nothing.

The friendship between Qatar and FIFA was extended to include the International Labor Organization. On 19 November, FIFA President Gianni Infantino angered the activist and human rights community by saying at a press conference that he felt he was part of the most vulnerable population in Qatar. “I feel gay today (…) I feel like an immigrant worker today,” he said. However, in this monologue in front of the world football press, he missed the news that FIFA and ILO would jointly establish a “center of excellence”.

“We are in discussion, we have a memorandum of understanding with the ILO,” said Gianni Infantino. “The (ILO) director general will be here in a few days,” he promised.

In fact, contrary to the statement made by the President of FIFA that day, there was no Memorandum of Understanding between his organization and the ILO.

Infantino and Gilbert Houngbo, the new director-general of the ILO, had met in Bali three days ago on the sidelines of the G20 summit. Houngbo was already familiar with Qatar: in 2016, as the organization’s former Deputy Director General, he initiated contacts with Doha after a coalition of trade unions acting on behalf of foreign workers filed a complaint with the ILO alleging human rights abuses. labor in Qatar.

According to sources familiar with the controversy surrounding the agreement, Infantino was in a hurry to draft and sign the agreement. He went directly to Houngbo and requested that the document be ready by December 4, when Houngbo would visit him in Doha.

According to sources close to the negotiations, internal consultations in the ILO followed, and despite some resistance from the authorities, Houngbo gave the green light to quickly draft a deal.

There was no shortage of allegations that needed to be investigated. In July last year, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of Migrants Felipe González Morales, UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Deputy Head Miriam Estrada-Castillo, UN President-Reporter Tae-Ung ​​Baik Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and Thought and Expression The UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Freedom, Irene Khan, wrote a letter to the Government of Qatar about the situation of Kenyan migrant worker Malcolm Bidali, who is 28 years old and has decided to publish his situation in Qatar on a blog.

“Mr Bidali raises awareness of workers’ rights issues, including working hours, wages, housing and working conditions,” they wrote. Three months later, the government said it accused Bidali of “creating and spreading disinformation in the state of Qatar”.

Luc Cortebeeck, former Vice Chairman of the ILO Workers’ Group Executive Board, describes in his 2020 book Still To Do: The Future of Decent Work Around the World, that he has built an “unprecedented lobbying machine.” , Qatar systematically sought to block an investigation into human rights and labor practices.

In 2014, Qatar was able to gather a broad coalition of support after François Crépeau, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Canadian Immigrants, published a documented report on the conditions of foreign workers in the country.

There were Arab countries that did not want to lose the remittances of immigrants working in Qatar and sending money to their families. The alliance still had governments negotiating deals with Qatar or attending major sporting events, fearing that such pressure would eventually affect their own plans and image.

As a result, no report was followed by the Human Rights Council, writes Cortebeeck. Qatar has never really been bothered.

That same year, based on evidence gathered by the Special Rapporteur and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Cortebeeck pressed the ILO Governing Body to set up a Commission of Inquiry on Qatar. Voting failed.

Cortebeeck talks about Qatar’s weapons of repression in his book. This includes the brute threat of the Cup’s host nation’s minister to cut energy supplies to countries that support the investigative mission. Thus, the former leader opens the history of attempts to hinder the work of Qatar’s fact-finding mission and continue to challenge evidence gathered over the years by the UN, unions, civil society, including football federations, and the press. .

Seduction.

Diplomatic and seduction attacks were still not lacking. In 2017, the Gulf state even became co-chairman of the Friends of Sports for Development and Peace Group, which supports events and resolutions on the role of sport and human rights at the UN.

During the sessions of the UN Human Rights Council, Qatar held four informational exhibitions, one of which is “Human Rights and Football”, in the corridors surrounding the Council hall, and since 2018, the UN in Geneva has co-hosted three art exhibitions. Qatar Permanent Mission

In his speech at one of these events sponsored by Emir, Michael Møller, the UN Director in Geneva at the time, congratulated the guests by saying, “A heartfelt thank you to Qatar for supporting this event, including the reception that awaits us later.” order will be fed.

In the last few years, the truth is that Qatar has sought international diplomacy as a way to polish its image after surprising the world by winning the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

But hosting the tournament for the order was never just about football, it was a shortcut to increase his soft power. For this, the small Gulf country did not hesitate to spend about 220 billion US dollars, well above what Russia spent in 2018 and Brazil in 2018 and 2014, respectively.

cloak

At the end of the cup, the emir covered Messi with Beshth, a mantle for Arab warriors who emerged from heroic deeds. For some, it was a sign of respect. An unnecessary imposition on the Argentine shirt for the critics at its prime moment.

But for many it was nothing more than a message: Qatar had won, and the echoes of the screams of the dead workers lifting the stadiums were muffled.