Some of the competing nations at the Soccer World Cup in Qatar have spoken out about the human rights abuses of which the host nation is guilty, but we’d probably be surprised at how small that number of countries actually is. And we’d also do well to remember that what some people think of as universal human rights, others think of as attempts to destroy their culture.
This is not to suggest that exposing the lack of human rights should be constrained, but to point out the complexities that can arise. The argument that “you’re attacking my culture” shouldn’t be a “get out of human rights jail free” card, but it is interesting to see the different modalities of protest at the World Cup.
For example, there’s the One Love armband, which teams were going to wear as a brave protest before they realised they risked their lives if they did so — if by “risk their lives” we mean “might have got a yellow card”. It’s been singled out by the head of Qatar’s “supreme World Cup committee for delivery and legacy”, who described it as a protest against Islamic values.
The Guardian quoted him as saying: “If the teams decided to do it throughout the entire season, that is one thing … But if you’re coming to make a point, or a statement in Qatar, that is something I have an issue with. And it goes back to the simple fact that this is a part of the world that has its own set of values. This is not Qatar I’m talking about, it’s the Arab world.”
The armband, launched in 2020 by the Royal Dutch Football Association as part of an inclusiveness campaign, is intended to signal opposition to discrimination of all kinds. Seven teams, all from Europe, had intended to wear the armband at the World Cup, but changed their minds when soccer governing body Fifa threatened them with sporting sanctions.
A good way to get an impression of how committed the countries at the World Cup are to human rights is to look at how they treat LGBTQI+ people back home
A good way to get an impression of how committed the countries at the World Cup are to human rights is to look at how they treat LGBTQI+ people back home. Jim Buzinski, a writer at a website called Outsports, has put together a guide based on the LGBTQI+ rights for all 32 countries in the event. Though, as he points out, “technically, it’s 31 countries since Wales and England are separate teams but are part of the UK”.
Remember this slippage of definition. Not to give you a spoiler or anything, but further on I’ll be discussing two other places that have a problematic, uneasy relationship with their country status — Palestine and Israel.
If you’re interested in Outsports’s methodology, please google it. Suffice to say that the author has used data from a variety of sources, including Human Rights Watch and the Equaldex LGBT equality index. As the clickbait websites say in their blurbs, the results will surprise you. Except, no, they won’t.
The category of countries where, basically, you risk imprisonment and/or death if you’re gay, are all the obvious contenders, where in most cases religious framing allows cultures to opt out of accountability.
The worst offender is Cameroon, which has no rights for LGBTQI+ people. “Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Cameroon and LGBT people face stigmatisation among the broader population. As of 2020, Cameroon ‘currently prosecutes consensual same-sex conduct more aggressively than almost any country in the world’.”
The penalty for same-sex relations is five years in prison.
Since we’ve started with an African country, let’s do the others. Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia are all on the list of most egregious offenders, and in all of them same-sex relationships are punishable with prison time.
In fact, all the World Cup countries in what Outsports calls the “death (or prison) to the gays group”, described as having “abysmal to horrifying conditions for LGBTQ people, with some literally deadly”, are from Africa or the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, and host nation Qatar are the remaining three on the evil list. The host country, Outsports points out, “is a disaster for LGBTQ people and openly hostile. Penalties vary in Qatar for same-sex relations. Non-Muslims are punished with fines and up to seven years imprisonment, and Muslims are punished with the maximum being stoning to death.”
In many of the other countries, while you might not risk prison, same-sex marriage is illegal. These include South Korea, Serbia, Poland, Croatia and Japan.
If, however, you’re a human rights half-full kind of person, you’ll be happy to know that 18 of the World Cup countries have excellent records when it comes to LGBTQI+ rights. They all allow same sex-marriage, and “are places where LGBTQ can live openly for the most part”.
There have been some protests from teams. The Germans covered their mouths before their match against Japan, either to signal that they were being silenced by Fifa, or to wittily allude to the “speak no evil” part of Fifa’s pact with Qatar.
Though not by any stretch of the imagination part of the human rights protests against Qatar (see above country ranking), the Iranian players staged what we could term a human rights-adjacent protest. They refused to sing their national anthem before their game against England, to express solidarity with antigovernment protesters in their country.
And plucky Wales, as I believe we’re contractually obliged to refer to that team, flew the rainbow flag at their training ground, though that seems to have been a one-off gesture.
It’s revealing to see how many people have different understandings of, and empathy with, what they believe constitutes human rights
While these protests are incurring the wrath of the Qatari government, as well as its Fifa soccerpuppet™, there are other forms of protest of which they’re more welcoming.
Qatar had to grant special permission for there to be direct flights from Tel Aviv for the World Cup, and also permitted Israeli diplomats to be stationed at a travel agency in the country to give consular support to Israeli soccer fans and media. According to the Times of Israel, the deal meant “Israelis without foreign passports can now travel to Qatar for the World Cup despite the lack of ties”.
The direct flights are “for Israelis, as well as for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, whose ability to travel depends on Israeli government approval”.
Almost 4,000 Israeli and 8,000 Palestinian fans have an entry visa to Qatar for the tournament, and they expected as many as 20,000 Israelis to attend the World Cup.
The measures are temporary, though. Qatar, sensitive to how this is received by its citizens, insists that these shouldn’t be seen as steps towards the sort of normalisation-of-relations agreement that other Arab states signed recently. In 2020, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed US-brokered agreements with Israel, with other regional states including Sudan and Morocco following suit soon afterwards.
Before the start of the tournament, the Israeli foreign ministry launched a campaign urging fans to be to be less visibly Israeli, and asked them to hide any Israeli symbols, “presumably a reference to Israeli flags and Stars of David”. According to news agency Associated Press, the ministry spokesperson urged fans to “downplay your Israeli presence and Israeli identity for the sake of your personal security”.
He ended off on an optimistic note, though. “Israeli officials expressed hope that a positive, hassle-free Israeli presence in Qatar could advance Israel’s ambitions to further integrate into the region after the normalisation deals with two of Doha’s Gulf Arab neighbours. ‘We very much hope things will go smoothly.’”
Fat chance. There have been bursts of anti-Israeli protests, or pro-Palestinian protests, depending on how you choose to characterise them. The Jerusalem Post says that “multiple Israelis have claimed to have been met by an atmosphere of hostility and hatred … with fans refusing to speak to Israeli journalists, waving Palestinian flags in the background of their videos and yelling at them”.
For example, a reporter “was yelled at by a Saudi fan who told him that ‘You are not welcome here. This is Qatar. This is our country. There is only Palestine; no Israel.’”
According to a Hezbollah official quoted by the Iranian Tasnim News Agency, “Arab fans’ refusal to speak with Israeli media reporters at the Fifa World Cup Qatar 2022 [signifies] the rejection of the occupying regime’s existence and normalisation deals”.
The oppression of migrant workers and LGBTQI+ people in Qatar, and the oppression of Palestinians by Israel, are about the denial of human rights. Many of us would argue that they should have equal weight. But, then again, many would not.
It’s revealing to see how many people have different understandings of, and empathy with, what they believe constitutes human rights. It’s a warning — not that we needed one — that presuming a universal standard of human rights is never going to be uncontested. We’re still in the group stage of the human rights World Cup, and I’m not sure we’ll ever get into the knockout phase.
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