The day of the World Cup draw for the controversial 2022 World Cup in Qatar has begun with a spectacular protest. At dawn, German artist Volker-Johannes Trieb unloaded 6500 footballs filled with sand in front of the headquarters of world soccer’s governing body FIFA in Zurich. “World conscience, you are a stain of shame” was written on the balls, symbolic of 6500 workers who died on Qatar’s World Cup construction sites.

The quote, taken from the work of Truus Menger-Overstegen, a Dutch resistance fighter against Nazi occupation, is intended to refer to FIFA’s “ignorance and indifference” in the face of human rights violations in the emirate denounced by numerous organizations, the artist said ahead of the action.

“Football is played in Qatar? It is played with human lives, and games of this kind are unacceptable,” the artist declared, “They will be bloody games. At the expense of the World Cup, many thousands of people have died in Qatar during the construction of the stadiums. They were treated like slaves and died from heat, from exhaustion, or because of lack of security.”

FIFA around the president Gianni Infantino, who currently lives in Qatar, had recently again been heavily criticized for its nibelung loyalty to the desert state. Infantino behaves “like a propaganda spokesman for the Qatari government,” Wenzel Michalski, the Germany director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, had said on Sky this week.

Silence at the Congress

Michalski accused FIFA of inaction with regard to the World Cup host. “We have never heard from FIFA at all to date that they have publicly denounced the human rights situation in Qatar,” he said. Something that also concerns action artist Trieb. “Modern slavery has snatched people from their lives and families from countries like India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Nepal,” he said, “Some would call it murder. FIFA is not stepping in.”

Critics were not silent at the FIFA Congress in Doha either, but were then silenced. Norwegian federation president Lise Klaveness accused the world governing body of awarding the tournament under “unacceptable circumstances and with unacceptable consequences.” FIFA must care for the “injured migrants at the World Cup construction sites, for the families of the workers who died (in Qatar, ed.),” the 40-year-old said in her speech: “There is no place for hosts who do not ensure the safety of World Cup workers. No place for leaders who don’t host women’s games. No place for hosts who don’t ensure safety and respect for the LGBQT-plus movement.”

After Representative Honduras countered her that the Congress was about soccer, World Cup organizing chief Hassan Al-Thawadi declared disgruntled: “Madam President comes to our country and has not tried to contact us and has not tried to start a dialogue.” He then referred to the progress attested by international unions.

Qatar has been under massive criticism for years. Media reports about thousands of dead workers in connection with preparations for the Winter World Cup in 2022 have led to heated debates in recent years, especially in the Western world, about the price that soccer is willing to pay for hosting a tournament.

Dilemma for Germany

At the center of the debate is the so-called kafala system, which deprives workers from abroad of virtually all rights. The system is officially considered abolished in Qatar, unlike in other countries in the region. However, human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International continue to denounce the dependence of migrant workers and have reported on the serious human rights violations in Qatar in recent weeks and months.

FIFA points to soccer’s great power to bring about change and officially backs change through dialogue and embrace. They say the world tournament shines a spotlight on the human rights situation in Qatar, allowing human rights to improve. Critics also point out that the spotlight will go out after the tournament.

Russia’s war against Ukraine once again changed the German perspective on the emirate in recent weeks. Qatar is supposed to be a building block of the energy transition and end Germany’s dependence on Russian gas.

“Germany must now no longer make the same mistakes and remain silent on human rights abuses when it comes to energy – or only address them half-heartedly. After all, that backfired badly in the Russian case,” Michalski, the director of Human Rights Watch Germany, had said last week in an interview with ntv.de in response to German Economics Minister Robert Habeck’s trip to the Emirate.