Dhe Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, has again affirmed that all supporters are welcome in his country “without discrimination” during the FIFA World Cup (20 November to 18 December). The Qatari people will “welcome football fans from all over the world with open arms,” he told the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
While he didn’t name a specific group, the emir’s statements appear to represent yet another attempt to appease the LGBTQ+ community. Qatar has been heavily criticized for violating human rights, and homosexuality is banned there.
The World Cup organizers always try to emphasize that same-sex couples would remain unmolested during the tournament. The world football association FIFA had already announced that rainbow flags would be allowed around the stadiums.
Action day of fans
The organized fan scene meanwhile continues to fight against the acceptance of the tournament in Qatar. Another joint event will be held in Frankfurt next Saturday under the motto “Not our World Cup”. The organizers are the “Never again!” network, the “Our Curve” alliance, the board games association from Berlin and the “Boycott Qatar” initiative.
“It’s about the fact that people were disenfranchised and driven en masse into overwork-heat-death to make a World Cup possible. It’s about a lack of freedom of the press and the worst forms of discrimination against women and the LGBTQ+ community,” said Dario Minden, spokesman for “Unsere KURK”, the German Press Agency. “And that the football industry at its peak doesn’t seem to care about any of this, if the wads of money being waved are big enough. It’s about a morally depraved sport that can still be harnessed to any cart.”
Qatar has long been criticized for its treatment of workers from other countries. Fatal accidents have also occurred on construction sites in the past. The emirate’s government refers to its own reforms and rejects some of the criticism. At the beginning of the week, the German Football Association (DFB) organized a congress on Qatar.
