Qatar deploys spies among World Cup workers

The Sun newspaper revealed that Qatar is manipulating spies among the workforce in the World Cup facilities, in order to monitor workers who report to humanitarian and human rights organizations about violations and abuses committed by employers against them or violations by the Qatari authorities.

Activists investigating the conditions at migrant workers’ camps claim they are being quizzed by some workers tucked into the hard class working that contributed to the construction sites of the World Cup structure in Qatar.

The activists added that the way in which they were quizzed indicated that the interrogators were professionally trained, according to the Mail on Sunday.

Sources told Equidem, a global human rights organization, that undercover security guards had been allegedly hired to weed out whistleblowers.

“We are in constant contact with workers in Qatar,” said Mustafa Qadri, Equidem’s chief executive.

According to the organization, workers have been able to identify informants in residential camps.

Workers at World Cup facilities believe that all spies have recently arrived after being able to expose Qatari violations and abuses against them.

According to The Sun, informants have been hidden to spy on human rights bodies and workers looking to speak to them, and are allegedly look out for any attacks and possible terrorist activity.

“Our sense is it’s being arranged by the government, not individual companies, but companies may also have their own people,” Qadri said.

“I have to be extremely careful. There has been a high level of surveillance, not just of journalists and people like me visiting the countries, but also of workers.”

In addition, there is a pattern of reprisals against workers who register complaints. The case of Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan whistleblower who worked as a security guard in Qatar and reported Qatari wrongdoing against workers, is the biggest example of the Qatari regime’s reprisals against workers, being imprisoned and fined for “broadcasting and publishing false news with the intent to endangering the public system of the state”.

Bidali claims he had been held in solitary confinement for a month before being released last June and reported that he had been interrogated about information he passed on about the mistreatment of migrant workers on World Cup construction sites.

Although work for November’s championship is almost complete, workers allegedly told Equidem they noticed an uptick in strange activities at several sites.

It is worth mentioning that thousands of workers are still waiting to get paid while organisers allegedly have paid David Beckham a reported £150million to serve as a World Cup ambassador.

According to Equidem, if a worker speaks to any journalist or human rights activist who claims his right and stolen salaries, he will be expelled from Qatar.

Nicholas McGeehan, co-founder of the Human Rights organisation FairSquare, has called on FIFA and Qatar to set up a compensation scheme for workers’ families waiting to get paid.

The Guardian revealed how 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since it began building infrastructure and World Cup stadiums.

“Seventy per cent of migrant worker deaths are unexplained, and on World Cup stadium projects, that still runs at 50 per cent,” said McGeehan.

The failure of Qataris to establish basic protection measures is inexcusable. Workers toil in a sauna-like weather, so workers’ families must be compensated Compensation will change the lives of the families who built the World Cup facilities, In particular, most workers have borrowed obscene amounts of money to get to Qatar with the hope of lifting their families out of poverty and some have returned in body bags with no answer for their loved ones about how they died.