Qatar Reviews Deaths Of Migrant Workers, But Huge Questions Remain

Recently, in an interview with talk show host Piers Morgan, Hassan Al-Thawadi, the secretary general of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, casually let it slip that organizers estimated 400-500 workers to have died as a result of work done on projects connected to the World Cup.

It was an astounding claim, for this was the first time Qatar’s official estimates of the number of victims of their World Cup ha risen to a few hundred. It was also astounding because of the casualness with which Al-Thawadi let the number slip. It was not part of an official report or an inquiry. It suggested that it didn’t matter much.

Al-Thawadi did pad it up with all the right phrases. “One death is too many, it’s as simple as that,” he said. But clearly, one death wasn’t too many. Or for that matter, 500 deaths weren’t too many for this World Cup, an exercise in soft power and posturing. Work conditions were improving, Al-Thawadi claimed. It has been twelve years since Qatar shocked the world and won the right to host a World Cup in stadiums that did not yet exist. They had more than a decade to bring work conditions up to humane levels. Yet, here we are with regular stories of mistreatment and exploitation being unearthed by reporters every day of the World Cup.

At the heart of migrant workers’ predicament, suffering and deaths lies the infamous kafala system, prevalent in all Gulf countries. In Arabic, kafala literally means ‘guardianship’. It ties a foreign worker to a sponsor, who yields “unchecked powers over migrant workers, allowing them to evade accountability for labor and HR abuses, and leaves workers beholden to debt and in constant fear of retaliation” according to Human Rights Watch. Qatar claims that kafala has been abolished, but the reality on the ground reality suggests the abolishment is nothing more than paper reforms.

Perhaps the gravest issue that Al-Thawadi’s statement brought to the surface is the number itself. For most of the build-up to the World Cup, the number of worker casualties that Qatar quoted was 37. Now, if Al-Thawadi is to be believed, it has risen to as high as 500. Or, in his words, “Between 400 and 500. I don’t have the precise number, that is something that is being discussed.”

“It seemed from this quote that high-ups in Qatar were still *deciding* how many deaths they’d pick, as opposed to, erm, actual deaths,” wrote British journalist Nick Harris on Twitter.

It is unimaginable that the Supreme Committee was unaware of workers dying, considering the hawk-like grip Qatar maintains over what immigrants can and can not do in the Gulf state. Perhaps Al-Thawadi’s new disclosure is a compromise number?

Multiple independent surveys and studies hold that more than 6000 people have died while working on Qatar’s infrastructure before the World Cup. The magic tricks and illusions that Qatar has pulled off in reducing this number to as little as possible is much more impressive than anything they’ve showcased during the World Cup.

A perfectly healthy worker who died while constructing the stadium is written off as a natural death simply because nothing fell on him or he did not fall from anywhere. There is no mention of the inhumane working conditions, the unforgiving heat or the long working hours. All these have played a role in thousands of ‘natural’ worker deaths

If there is one thing worse than killing these people, it is erasing their very existence. By not being honest about World Cup-related worker deaths, Qatar is doing exactly that.