Journalists working for the British Broadcasting Corporation were arrested while reporting on the conditions facing migrant workers on World Cup construction projects in Qatar. The country’s treatment of workers, who receive few rights under Qatar’s labor system, has drawn international scrutiny ahead of the 2022 World Cup, and an effort to chronicle Qatar’s preparations led to members of the BBC crew spending two nights in jail and a travel ban that initially kept them from leaving the country upon their release, the network announced Monday.
“Our arrest was dramatic,” Mark Lobel, one of the arrested BBC reporters, wrote on the network’s web site. “Suddenly, eight white cars surrounded our vehicle and directed us on to a side road at speed. A dozen security officers frisked us in the street, shouting at us when we tried to talk. They took away our equipment and hard drives and drove us to their headquarters.”
The crew was later interrogated by Qatari officers, though they were never formally accused of any crime. “Instead,” Lobel wrote, “they asked over and over what we had done and who we had met.”
The reporters were in Qatar to examine the conditions facing migrant laborers working on construction projects related to the 2022 World Cup. Qatar’s labor system and conditions facing migrant workers, who make up more than 90 percent of the Qatari work force, have drawn criticism from international labor organizations and political and labor leaders in other countries. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), in a 2014 report, described Qatar’s working conditions as “modern slavery” and estimated that as many as 4,000 migrant workers would die on World Cup-related construction projects. Records from foreign governments have shown large numbers of deaths already this year.
The Qatari government last year announced widespread labor reforms, and though labor groups have continued to criticize its lack of progress, it said in a statement that it had invited a dozen reporters to see “some sub-standard labour accommodation as well as some of the newer labour villages. We gave the reporters free rein to interview whomever they chose and to roam unaccompanied in the labour villages.” The BBC reporters, the statement said, “decided to do their own site visits and interviews in the days leading up to the planned tour. In doing so, they trespassed on private property, which is against the law in Qatar just as it is in most countries. Security forces were called and the BBC crew was detained.”
The BBC, however, rejected those claims in its own statement.
“Their presence in Qatar was no secret and they were engaged in a perfectly proper piece of journalism,” the network said. “The Qatari authorities have made a series of conflicting allegations to justify the detention, all of which the team rejects. We are pressing the Qatari authorities for a full explanation and for the return of the confiscated equipment.”
Lobel’s crew was at least the second arrested while reporting on Qatar’s World Cup in recent months. Journalists from Germany’s ADR and WDR, two public broadcasting networks, were arrested in March while filming a documentary about potential corruption in FIFA’s decision to grant the World Cup to Qatar. The crew’s equipment and materials were demolished upon their arrest, according to one of the reporters. Lobel wrote that his crew’s equipment was also seized and, as of yet, has not been returned. Qatar’s labor minister agreed to an on-camera interview following the reporters’ release, Lobel wrote.
FIFA has taken little action on any of the potential problems around its 2022 host. Its own report cleared FIFA officials of corruption in the bidding process, and the organization has said little about labor abuses in the country. In a statement to the Associated Press, FIFA said that it is “currently seeking clarity from the Qatari authorities of the situation that the BBC has contacted us about.”