A Qatari sports club is under fire for allegedly bussing in migrant workers to run a half-marathon in honor of their efforts to construct and develop stadiums in the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Hundreds of runners “who appeared to be laborers, wearing only jeans, flip-flops or running barefoot” took part in the 13.1-mile run organized by the Al-Sadd Sports Club, participants told Doha News.
One runner told Doha News, “The worst part of all was that there was a large mass of laborers wearing jeans, flip flops and no proper running equipment… Some laborers tried to leave but were turned back and were yelled at that they need to stay and cross the line.”
Another marathon participant said, “Others were forced to walk several kilometers before the organizers obviously realized they would not finish, and so they were loaded back into their busses and sent away.”
Mega Gonzales Cervantes, an Al-Sadd Sports Club representative, told Doha news that “appropriate running clothing and shoes had been given to all participants, but that he couldn’t force runners to wear them.”
“If they didn’t want to run, we advised them to go to their buses,” Cervantes told The Telegraph. Cervantes insisted that organizers encouraged workers “with decent jobs” to take part and said it was a voluntary run. “I spoke to them very politely. … They are human as well, right?”
In a since-deleted Facebook page, a sports club organizer apologized for the poorly-organized event, which didn’t begin until 2 p.m. when the temperature was already 84 degrees. Some participants complained that organizers packed up before the official race end time. Traffic was also rerouted back after three hours, forcing some participants to leave.
A brochure advertising the Qatar Mega Marathon stated that the marathon “represents a message of thanks and appreciation to the efforts of workers to contribute to the construction of the State of Qatar and the development of stadiums and prepared to host the FIFA World Cup 2022.” Another marathon objective was to respond “to the campaign waged by the sector of envious haters on the success of Qatar to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and to their false allegations of persecution of workers and residents in our beloved country.”
Since 2012, migrants have been drawn to Qatar to help with several major infrastructure projects on new airports, railways, and roads in the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup. But Qatar has been heavily criticized for its mistreatment of migrant workers. Ninety percent of Qatar’s population are migrant workers who enter the country through the employee sponsorship program, known as the kafala system. They “must have a domestic sponsor to enter the country, and that sponsor then controls their pay, living conditions, their freedom to change jobs, and even their ability to leave the country,” ThinkProgress’ Travis Waldron reported last year. Workers have virtually no way of reporting employer abuses, like unfair compensation, and sometimes even have their passports confiscated.
Qatar Labor Minister Abdullah Saleh Mubarak al-Khulaifi announced labor reforms last year, stating that it would end the kafala system. Critics call the changes “cosmetic” and that “modern slavery will still exist in Qatar” unless the reforms went further.
“They are dying because of these work conditions, because of the heat, because there is no safety measures applied, some of them hydration. It is anything but normal,” human rights activist Husain Adbulla told HBO’s Real Sports last year.
Based on current death tolls for migrant laborers in Qatar in recent years, the International Trade Union Confederation estimates that more than 4,000 migrant workers will die on World Cup-related projects, or more than one a day.