EELV MEP David Cormand denounced on Monday the awarding of the FIFA World Cup to Qatar by Fifa, accusing it, as well as the French Federation (FFF), of being “a bunch of people who let themselves be corrupted”.
“I know I won’t watch” the World Cup in Qatar which begins in November, explained on Public Senate the former national secretary of Europe Ecology The Greens, without formally calling for a boycott.
“It disgusts me: going to see people playing football, partying and underneath there are 6,500 corpses… Do we realize what it is 6,500 dead people to build air-conditioned stadiums? ?”he was indignant.
SEE ALSO – The composition of the groups for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
This figure, put forward by the British newspaper The Guardian, is denied by Qatar and certain international organizations. Officially, there have been three deaths in the eight World Cup stadiums.
A report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) also concluded that 50 workers died in workplace accidents in Qatar in 2020 and another 500 were seriously injured. However, the ILO notes shortcomings in the system for investigating and registering deaths.
“Fifa and the French Football Federation should be reformed, which are still a bunch of people who have allowed themselves to be corrupted in this affair”accused David Cormand.
“It’s a shame. The values of sport, that’s not it. None of this has anything to do with football anymore.he lamented.
Read alsoStadium, air conditioning, alcohol and cigarettes … How Qatar passed a first life-size test 72 days before the World Cup
Although they have initiated labor market reforms, the Qatari authorities remain regularly criticized by NGOs for the treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers, particularly from Asia, on major construction sites linked to the 2022 World Cup.
During the ratification by Parliament in early August of a partnership between Paris and Doha on the security of the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar, several opposition MPs had denounced the “ecological scandal” of this World Cup, with air-conditioned stadiums or the “scandalous treatment of workers” immigrants, “quasi-slaves”.
The French national financial prosecutor’s office also opened in 2019 a judicial investigation for “active and passive corruption” on the process of designating the emirate to organize the competition on December 2, 2010.
At the heart of suspicion: a meeting organized at the Elysée Palace on November 23, 2010, attended by President Nicolas Sarkozy but also Tamim ben Hamad al-Thani – then Crown Prince of Qatar who became Emir in 2013 – and Michel Platini, vice-president of Fifa and president of UEFA when the 2022 World Cup is awarded.