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Faeser is convinced by the World Cup visit to Qatar
11/01/2022 3:46 p.m
Federal Interior Minister Faeser clearly criticizes the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar. So clearly that the country summoned the ambassador. Now Faeser is a guest in the Arab country – and will return. Your claim will be guaranteed, she explains. But of course many problems remain.
The World Cup in Qatar is controversial in Germany because of human rights issues and the precarious situation of guest workers in the Arab country. But at the end of their official talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, Nancy Faeser, Germany’s Minister of the Interior and Sport, believes it’s okay for her to watch Germany’s opening game against Japan in Qatar from the stands.
After their talks on human rights and reform processes in Qatar on Monday and Tuesday, she decided “that I will travel to the World Cup and continue the talks,” says Faeser. The SPD minister stressed that it was important for her during this visit “to work towards ensuring that everyone from Germany who comes here for the World Cup, no matter where they come from, no matter who or what they believe in, or no matter who they are loves is also safe here in Qatar”. She has now received this security guarantee from Prime Minister Sheikh Chalid bin Chalifa Al-Thani.
It is also of great importance that human rights and sustainability are also decision criteria for awarding future international competitions. A lot has happened in the country in recent years, especially with regard to employee rights. But the Qatari interlocutors and FIFA President Gianni Infantino also admitted “that there is certainly room for improvement,” says the President of the German Football Association (DFB), Bernd Neuendorf, who accompanies Faeser. He wants to help strengthen those forces in Qatar who want to push reforms.
“Totally difficult award”
Arabic music wafts through the chilled hotel lobby, while outside, at 33 degrees in the shade, the humid heat slows every step. The closure of the kilometer-long shore road in Doha, ordered for the World Cup, poses logistical challenges for Faeser’s companion. But the minister responsible for top-class sport is not upset.
The colorfully lit skyscrapers, the big cars, the poverty of the foreign workers who lay turf and pave parking lots for the World Cup – for some members of Faeser’s delegation the culture shock on their first visit to the Qatari capital Doha is at least as great as it is for them locals when, in a few days, loud fans from all over the world invade the small Gulf emirate.
There are two buses in the parking lot in front of the Lusail Stadium, where the final is scheduled to take place on December 18th. Workers take a short break in the shadow of the vehicles. “For us as the federal government, this is a very difficult award,” Faeser said last week with a view to the World Cup in Qatar. This was nothing that others, especially human rights organizations, had not voiced beforehand. This is probably one of the reasons why some in the Federal Ministry of the Interior were amazed at the vehement reaction of the Qatari leadership, which had the German ambassador come last Friday to hand him a note of protest.
Infantino has no desire for press representatives
A very unusual process in view of the otherwise very good German-Qatarian relationship. But from the point of view of the World Cup hosts, it makes a difference who speaks about it and when. Around three weeks before the opening of the first football World Cup in an Arab country, people in Doha are particularly sensitive. Arab Twitter users indulge in wild speculation: Are the Germans angry because Qatar didn’t promise them quick deliveries of liquid gas during their energy crisis?
FIFA President Gianni Infantino receives Faeser with practiced politeness. The powerful football official, who is fully behind the unusual host city of Qatar and has been living there since last October, has no desire to meet German press representatives.
Faeser’s meeting with the prime minister and interior minister takes place in a very small circle. Here, too, a press meeting is not desired by the hosts. This may be due to issues of protocol or the fact that Sheikh Chalid bin Chalifa Al-Thani Faeser is able to give assurances regarding the LGBTQ* community behind closed doors. However, making such a statement in front of cameras would be a completely different step in the conservative Islamic country. LGBT is the English abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. The variants LGBTQ, LGBTQI or LGBTQIA+ are also often used. Each letter represents one’s gender identity or sexual orientation.
Fair working conditions are far away
The second issue that has occupied some European countries in particular in the years since the small country was awarded the World Cup is the living conditions of guest workers from South Asia. After all, some laws have been changed, the breaks for construction workers in the hot summer months are now officially longer in Qatar than elsewhere in the region.
However, the current situation of foreign workers in Qatar is still a long way from what European trade unionists understand by fair working conditions. After the visit, the Qatari hosts should be happy that Faeser, a member of the federal government, will come to the World Cup. Another aspect was important for Faeser: The Qatari government could – as with the evacuation in 2021 – use its relations with the militant Islamist Taliban in Afghanistan to facilitate the departure of women’s rights activists, who will inform Germany in the coming months about a humanitarian want to start the program.
Theoretically, nothing would stand in the way of Faeser’s party friend, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, taking part in the World Cup. Only in sporting terms is the hurdle high: Because for that, the German national team would have to make it to the final.