Slave labor in Qatar is commonplace, repeatedly proven by international organizations. "Simple practice". To hire a foreign worker, take away his passport, halve the promised salary, and even beat him with a whip for drinking a bowl of wine from grief or stupidly kill him with overwork for twelve hours is not a scandalous crime, but a generally accepted custom based on the crutches of Sharia law.
Throughout the 12 years of preparations for the World Cup, human rights activists around the world were screaming about thousands of mysterious deaths at the construction of sports facilities, demanding FIFA to figure it out. The Qatari organizing committee, together with FIFA, "sorted it out" and announced that there were three (3) such deaths. (The combination of thimbles is that only the construction of the stadium itself was considered, while the preparations for the championship caused a construction boom in the country that gave rise to a new subway network, highways, hotels, an airport was expanded, the whole city of Lusail was built, et cetera.)
All 12 years of preparation for the championship, human rights activists around the world screamed about thousands of mysterious deaths in the construction of sports facilities
Other deaths at other sites were attributed to "natural causes" (in the ARD documentary series "The Championship of Shame", Qatari doctors said that all these "natural causes" were filed under heavy pressure from the authorities). The Russian reader, however, is well aware even without Bastrykin's magnifying glass what a total state lie is, which goes along with huge material gain, state-patriotic swagger and outright crimes, which are culturally called "violations of human rights" in the international community.
Qatar has been dangling in the 100th place in the world human rights rankings for decades, somewhere in the region of Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Cambodia. The rating is a soulless figure, but behind it are legalized torture, corporal punishment, death for homosexuals, humiliation of women and, most importantly, the unpunished arbitrariness of those in power, covered with a fig veil of confusing and obviously unlawful "laws", of course, declared a national bond and the right to " cultural characteristics".
The Qatari order is not some world-wide conspiracy secret, but the truth is publicly available to everyone, and even more so to FIFA officials, to sports minds – at least through Wikipedia . At the same time, the Swiss prosecutor's office has been trying for many years to sort out the numerous accusations of fifa officials of corruption, money laundering and extortion. And the decision made in 2010 on the World Cup in Qatar is one of such episodes (in fairness, the Swiss court acquitted the then head of FIFA, the elderly Sepp Blatter, on one of the main charges, but there are dozens of similar episodes and suspected officials). To ensure that officials do not change their minds, the Qatari authorities have spent hundreds of millions of euros on surveillance of each of them, and surveillance often leads to blackmail, this is known to every viewer of crime series.
One way or another, the public, who tried to prevent the championship in Qatar, lost. The scandals continue, but advertising budgets are being mastered, since Sunday the ball is rolling on the emerald luxury lawn, millions of gallons of popcorn have been purchased by viewers, and special fans have been hired to the stadium to maintain order and comfort.
Inspired by such a “victory”, the current leader of FIFA with the speaking surname Infantino goes on the offensive : “Europeans teach many, many lessons. I am European. I think that for what we Europeans have been doing all over the world for the last three thousand years, we must apologize for the next three thousand years before teaching other people morality. It is not surprising that the Russian “Komsomolskaya Pravda of a Thousand Hills” immediately quotes him, joyfully hooting, putting the quote in the headline.
Does Gianni Infantino remember one of the most striking European lessons, when in 1936 the entire civilized world was disgraced at the Berlin Olympics? There were more flags with a swastika than Olympic symbols, and athletes were forced to "zigg" in the presence of Hitler. So now, the Qatari authorities, in collusion with FIFA, have banned foreign athletes from symbols in support of persecuted minorities. (It is fair to say that the decision to hold the Berlin Olympics was made even before the Nazis came to power, and in general it was held in Germany to replace the 1916 Olympics canceled due to the World War.) But by 1936, Jewish and Gypsy athletes were already expelled from German sports , and the general features of the regime were not clearly visible except to the dove of peace and the gravedigger of Czechoslovakia, Neville Chamberlain. In general, what came out happened: “The triumph of the will” and the then gray moth.
By 1936, Jewish and Gypsy athletes were already banished from German sports.
Or maybe Gianni Infantino will remember the affectionate Olympic bear of 1980, when Soviet troops ironed Afghanistan, and the world community behaved in a completely different way? The Olympic Games in Moscow were boycotted by 65 countries, and the sale of Pepsi-Cola and Marlboro in soft packs in Moscow did not deceive anyone. And this, of course, is not the main one, but still a stick in the wheel of the Soviet colossus also played a role in its gradual collapse.
And in contrast to this Olympics, we recall the triumph of another gray moth: at the Sochi Olympics, when the Russian Federation literally the day before, one day before the start of the occupation of Crimea and the subsequent invasion of Eastern Ukraine, hosted winter athletes from all over the world, doing business with Putin as usual ( the triumph was spoiled by urine transmitted through secret holes in the walls, but this is already “different”).
The mantra "sport out of politics" has never been able to disguise the powerful propaganda function of world sports. This or that world-class sports venue, whether it took place in this or that country, demonstrates to the world civilization the involvement of this country in a peaceful family of peoples, mutual respect and equality (sorry for the banality, but, as we see, banal truths constantly have to be reminded). This was well understood by both Hitler and Stalin, who, despite all his anti-Western isolationism, immediately after the war hurried to join the Olympic movement, as even the delusional Putin now understands, as the Emir of Qatar, Mr. Tamim ibn Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Sani understands.
Yes, the ball itself, rolling on the emerald field, is round and neutral, and the championship can be an honest demonstration of the best aspirations and civilizational achievements. It is not for nothing that the Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, in a recent conversation with former sports journalist Yuri Dud, bitterly recalls: “You, Yura, probably covered the European Championship in 2012, and it was held, among other things, in the city of Donetsk. And the very picture of Donetsk with this hi-tech, and at the same time with extremely lovingly crafted antediluvian houses, with this amazing stadium, magnificent airport and avenues. It was the largest European city, fantastic in its attractiveness. And then he was pushed away. Squeezed out…”
But one can also recall the wild contrast of cheerful and colorful football fans from all over the world joyfully walking around Moscow and other Russian cities in 2018 – with news about hundreds of undesirable elements already planted by Putin, about torture in the occupied Crimea, about the murdered Boris Nemtsov (the reader can easily continue list). Three years remained before the insane full-scale invasion of Ukraine (just like during the Berlin Olympics, there were three years before the Nazi invasion of Poland). But to cheerful and colorful fans, as well as FIFA, as well as European politicians, all this was then unimportant. They, like Infantino today, did not want to "teach other people morality." Yes, and myself too.
There is one important point regarding the commonness of evil and the effect of business as usual. FIFA and advertising sponsors, and even more so Mr. Tamim ibn Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Sani, have quite visible interests, and now they have made such a decision. But after all, each individual advertising sponsor, each individual local federation, each Western tourist is not at work with the emir, like the fake spectators hired by him at the stadium? No one is forcing either an indifferent burgher or a partially undermobilized Russian to buy popcorn and consume football sessions, making millions of clicks for the advertisers of this Shame Championship.
And again, in fairness, I want to make a reservation: after all, the criminal is the one who breaks the laws, and directly the one who kills people, and not the one who just turns on the TV and watches the corner. Let's not be radicals in snow-white coats who reproach the Russians for paying taxes allegedly for weapons (this is not entirely true with taxes, but let's not digress). And yet, the line where diplomacy ends, where “Oh sport, you are the world” ends and collaborationism, or simply complicity, begins is very vague, and sometimes has a slight smell of sulfur.
The line where diplomacy ends, where “Oh sport, you are the world” ends and complicity begins, is very vague
When in the spring I grabbed the button of the famous rock musician Boris Grebenshchikov, who sharply condemned the war, with a simple question that then, and still tormented absolutely everyone: “Boris, how did it happen?” – he sharply replied with a thesis, which, to be honest, did not reach our inflamed minds right away. This war started because we didn't give a damn about all the other wars. Where is this Rwanda? What is there somewhere in Pakistan? Don't care. And now we ourselves are in this situation: “The wars in humanity never stop. I’m afraid that this is a property of human nature, it’s just that usually wars are divided into those that we don’t think about and don’t want, because they happen somewhere in Africa or Chechnya, that is, this is not in my quarter and they don’t talk about it in the bakery , but there are those about which they talk in the bakery. Hemingway has a book “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, and there is an epigraph: No man is an island, that is, no one is an island. Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you,” Grebenshchikov said then, and that’s why today I am writing this column with such fury about Qatar, where they don’t give a damn about dead workers, well, maybe 0.01% of the surrounding population world, and even more so to a burgher with popcorn, with a thick finger underlining in the newspaper the time of the next broadcast from Doha.
The other day I was lucky enough to talk not with a rock musician, but with one of the most famous classical musicians of Russian origin in the world, Yevgeny Kissin:
“Western politicians have brought to the point that Putin is doing now. Back in the sixties of the last century, when the West “turned its face” towards the USSR, it extended its existence, and because of this, many millions of people died in the world. The Soviet Union supported terrorism throughout the world, including in Africa and Latin America. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist, instead of pursuing the same policy towards Russia that the West pursued towards Germany after Nazism, it forgave Abkhazia, Chechnya, and support for Milosevic. Then came Putin, the invasion of Georgia, the de facto annexation of South Ossetia, the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass – and nothing else, some toothless sanctions. Western politicians did what we today call various bad words.”
For some reason, musicians sometimes understand the essence of things better than some professional democrat politicians, officials of international organizations, not to mention peaceful and colorful fans.