Qatar is a rich Gulf nation known for both its huge oil reserves and its flagrant human rights abuses. It is a dictatorship in which women have to seek permission from their male guardians to marry or work in many government jobs, in which being gay is criminalised and can result in a prison sentence, in which migrant workers are treated appallingly and in which journalists have been imprisoned for reporting critically on domestic politics. Yet all of this will inevitably be minimised as the world’s eyes fall on Qatar for the start of the 2022 World Cup next month.
Qatar’s leaders know this and this is why they have paid through the nose – estimates put it at $220bn (£190bn), by far the most expensive World Cup of all time – to host the competition, including lavishing money on efforts to lobby British politicians, as we report today. And so football teams, international supporters, the world’s media and foreign dignitaries will duly head to Qatar for an international sporting tournament that has serious environmental implications and will, some predict, leave a huge carbon footprint. At a conservative estimate, at least 6,500 migrant workers have lost their lives n Qatar since it was awarded the World Cup in 2011.
This World Cup is just the latest in a long line of expensive international sporting events that have been hosted by nations that stand accused of fundamental human rights breaches. The 2008 Summer Olympics and 2022 Winter Olympics in China; the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia; the Bahrain Grand Prix; the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Qatar; the 2019 Anthony Joshua fight in Saudi Arabia: there is an indisputable trend of big sporting events being hosted by rich but unsavoury countries.
This is the reflection of a number of trends. There is the push factor of dictatorships around the world seeking to launder their reputations through the medium of international sport – $200bn on a World Cup doesn’t just secure international visitors and sporting entertainment but PR that money normally can’t buy. This is particularly valuable in an age when Gulf states recognise that at some point the oil and gas will run out and so are looking to build other sources of power on the world stage. In response, competitions are more and more expensive to put on, as democracies that have to justify the expense to voters get priced out of the market. The 2006 World Cup in Germany cost just $4.3bn. The levels of financial corruption in international sport – governing bodies such as Fifa and the International Olympic Committee have been notoriously porous to expensive bribes and shady deals in exchange for votes behind the scenes – have made things worse.
All this means that sporting bureaucrats often face unenviable choices, for example, between Beijing in China and Almaty in Kazakhstan for the 2022 Winter Olympics, which ultimately went to the former, necessitating the manufacture of fake snow out of 49m gallons of water.
Sports governing bodies advance the case that awarding competitions to countries with questionable human rights records draws attention and scrutiny to their abuses, encouraging liberalisation. Sebastian Coe, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, claimed at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Qatar that sport can uniquely “shine the spotlight on issues” and is “the best diplomat we have”. But there is little academic evidence of these effects. China’s human rights abuses got worse between the 2009 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics. The same is true of Russia and the 2014 Sochi Olympics. And the 1936 Munich Olympics were undoubtedly a propaganda coup for the Nazis.
Sporting competitions would lead to improvements only if sports bodies were to take a tough approach with host nations, attaching stringent conditions that improve human rights records beyond the period of the competition itself. But they are not, generally, willing to do this. In fact, they are much more likely to equivocate and protest their neutrality over the most dreadful human rights abuses. Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, when asked what he would say to Chinese Uyghurs forcibly separated from their children and interned in concentration camps, declared on the eve of the 2022 Beijing Olympics: “The position of the IOC must be to give political neutrality… if we get in the middle of intentions and disputes and confrontations of political powers, then we are putting the Games at risk.” Could there be anything more morally decrepit than a policy of neutrality on genocide?
The problem does not start and stop with sport. In truth, the approach the international sports bodies take to countries such as the Gulf states is just a reflection of international politics. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are considered close allies of the UK, with cooperation on security and the fostering of trade links, including arms sales. The RAF even has a joint air force squadron with Qatar; earlier this year Boris Johnson went to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman despite the fact that his government had arranged for the Saudi journalist Jamal Kashogghi to be murdered in its consulate in Istanbul in 2018. International sporting competitions should not be awarded to governments with appalling human rights records. But this is a line that western political, not just sporting, leadership has proved all too willing to cross.
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