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Cities, athletes, stars, politicians… The list of calls for a boycott of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar – Liberation

The organization of the World Cup in Qatar, which is to take place from November 20 to December 18, has been the subject of much criticism for several years because of the discrimination suffered by women, the repression of the rights of LGBT + people, the exploitation sometimes fatal of thousands of foreign workers, suspicions of corruption as well as the disastrous ecological impact of this tournament.

CheckNews compiles here the list of voices in France and abroad who call for a boycott of this event. The article will be regularly updated.

Sportsmen

Eric Cantona (ex-French international footballer): “Personally, I will not watch it, declared the former French player to the Daily Mail in an interview published on January 12. To be honest, I don’t really care about the next World Cup, which is not a real World Cup for me. […] In recent decades, many events such as the Olympic Games or World Cups have taken place in emerging countries, such as Russia or China. […] But Qatar is not the country of football. […] It’s all about the money and the way they treated the people who built the stadiums is horrible. And thousands of people died.”

In an interview at The Athleticpublished on September 26, Eric Cantona believed that the British player David Beckham had committed a “big mistake” by becoming the ambassador of the competition in Qatar. The king” still took the defense of the players who will play the matches, explaining that “It’s too easy to blame the players” when pressure should be put on “politicians, presidents, federations, ministers […] who have the power to boycott it”.

In early September, a letter signed by Cantona also circulated on social networks and was commented on by the press. It was a fake, as the player’s brother told CheckNews.

Philipp Lahm (former German international footballer): Now president of the Euro 2024 organizing committee in Germany, Lahm indicated on August 8 that, outside of professional reasons, he would not attend the World Cup in Qatar, specifying that he had no “don’t want to [s]go there as a fan. I prefer to follow the tournament from home. If, in my function as director of the Euro tournament, I had a mission or an agenda in Qatar, it would of course be different. The ex-Bayern player stressed the importance of “human rights [qui] should play a major role in the awarding of the tournament. When a country which is one of the worst students in this area obtains the contract, one wonders on what criteria the decision was made”.

Tom Daley (British diver, Olympic champion in Tokyo): openly homosexual, Daley called in October 2021 for a boycott believing that “The World Cup which will take place in Qatar is subject to extreme rules against LGBT+ people and women. I think it should not be allowed to host a sporting event in a country that criminalizes basic human rights”.

Part of the Wales team staff let it be known in June that she would not travel to Qatar, despite her team qualifying, due to non-respect of LGBT+ rights.

The artists

Vincent Lindon (actor): guest of It’s up to you, on August 29, Vincent Lindon clearly positioned himself for a boycott of the tournament and promised that he would not watch any matches. “We are in a giant asylum […] [La Coupe du monde], it is not only a climatic aberration, an ecological aberration, and in addition there is a non-respect of the ideology of human rights. It would be the actors world cup, yes I think I would do a press conference where I would say […] I give up going there”. The actor then believed that the decision should come from the players and not from the States.

Virginie Despentes: In an interview at So Foot September 12, where she spoke of her passion for football, especially women’s football, the writer said that“obviously” she would not follow the competition, which she qualifies «d’aberration».

Towns

Several major French cities have indicated that they will not show any match of the tournament on giant public screens, regardless of the outcome of the matches for the Blues. These are currently: Paris, Strasbourg, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nancy, Reims, Rennes, Brest, Clermont-Ferrand and Rodez.

The initiative is also followed by several municipalities in Belgium.

The supporters

Fabien Bonnel (co-founder of the French supporters’ association Irrésistibles): The supporter told France Info that he will not go to Qatar and will not watch any matches on a personal basis.

In Germany, the boycott-qatar.de site brings together the signatures of a hundred sports associations and thousands of supporters who undertake not to support this World Cup, by not buying any product bearing the logo of the tournament, nor sponsor products and refraining from traveling to Qatar or watching matches. “The motto for the date of the tournament before Christmas 2022 is: Saint-Nicolas rather than Adidas, gingerbread rather than Fifa”, we read in its manifesto.

Businesses and businesses

On March 12, 2022, the Dutch turf supplier Hendriks Graszoden, regular in sports competitions announced that he would not deliver turf to Qatar. A spokesperson justified the decision on television, saying: “We have seen what is happening there. We saw how stadiums were built in Qatar. The workers were not wearing protective clothing. We did not like this attitude at the organizational level. You can easily see the difference between residents in Qatar and workers. There is a huge wealth gap. We knew in the meantime that there had been deaths during the work. The lack of reaction from Fifa surprised us all.

Some bars in France, Belgium and Germany have already announced that they will not be broadcasting the matches, sitting on part of their revenue. In France, the site ramenezlacoupealaraison.com (still under construction) should list these places which will offer “alternative events to the world, organized by those who have chosen that our values ​​must be respected”, according to the creator of the site.

political leaders

In France, the main left-wing political parties, which make up the Nupes, display a boycott position in Qatar because of the social, ecological or human impact of competition in this country. The government, the right and the extreme right do not call for a boycott, believing that the question no longer arises, indicates the world.

EE-LV : In a press release published in October 2019, EE-LV already called for a boycott of the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, citing as the main reasons the country’s role in the financing of radical Islamism, its penal code “which provides for the stoning of women”, the accusations of corruption, but also the fact that she “will be tainted by the blood of foreign workers who built eight stadiums at the cost of their lives: one death per day on the construction sites” and the current climate emergency. Its former national secretary Julien Bayou reaffirmed these positions in March 2021.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise: The former presidential candidate has repeatedly indicated his refusal to support the competition in Qatar. On April 1, 2021, at the microphone of RTL, he said he was ready to participate in a battle for the boycott if it were to take place. He described the organization of the tournament as “shame” recalling the figure of 6,500 workers who died on construction sites, and denouncing the role of “financier of anti-French activities” in Africa, in particular militias which “shoot at us”. He called on the players of the French team not to go there, believing that“we can’t play football on corpses, we can’t play football with violent, narrow-minded obscurantists like the ones we have here”.

He repeated at the end of September his position on the set of the show What an era! broadcast on France 2 and underlined the initiative of rebellious parliamentarians who launched a petition to boycott the event. They promise that “we will not watch any match of the World Cup hosted in Qatar and refuse to purchase any merchandise related to the competition” and call on the President of the Republic, the Minister of Sports and the French Football Federation to “take a public position on this double human and environmental scandal”, at “send no representative” and to “not to go there, including in the event of a good performance by the France team”.

Olivier Faure and the Socialist Party: The first secretary of the Socialist Party and deputy for Seine-et-Marne invited all mayors to follow the example of cities, in particular led by socialists like Anne Hidalgo, who will not broadcast the World Cup, in an interview with France Info, October 4. He also calls for a diplomatic boycott aimed at not participating in the opening ceremony, believing that it “will be done on a cemetery. There are 6,500 workers who died to build these stadiums during the last twelve years, in conditions where we were not very far from slavery”. He has pledged not to watch any matches.

Fabien Roussel and the Communist Party: In an interview granted to France Info on September 14, the general secretary of the PCF claimed to be “rather sensitive” at “Cantona’s Call” and asserted: “If I was a professional footballer, I would choose not to go to the World Cup in Qatar.” He then recalled that“there are thousands of deaths under the construction sites of the World Cup in Qatar, there is a waste of money to have air-conditioned stadiums while we are talking about the environment, and Qatar is a country which always criminalizes homosexuality”. The Bouches-du-Rhône senator Jérémy Bacchi also distinguished himself by calling for a boycott from October 2021 in a column published by the Huffington Post.

Researchers

Economist Pierre Rondeau prompted on May 24 on France 5 to “boycott» the World Cup in Qatar in “watching illegal streaming matches”. “In streaming, we are not going to count my market share. Since today, the 6 billion [de dollars] are partly on television rights, paid for by the television channels… If tomorrow, everyone does that, the television channels do not have an audience. They stop paying 150 million euros per country to broadcast the World Cup.

Religious people

From 2015, the Archbishop of Cologne (Germany), Rainer Maria Woelki, had called for a boycott of the sporting event if the working and living conditions of the workers had not improved. The German cleric, a football lover, was already warning about the exploitation of these “daily laborers [qui] arrive here, lured by false promises of wages; they are parked like animals in apartments separated from each other by pieces of cloth, […] their passports are taken away from them.”

The media

Daily Reunion Island and Indian Ocean announced on September 13 that in the name of his values, he will not cover the event.

This list is regularly updated. If you wish to inform us of a missing name, you can send an email to j.pezet [at] liberation.fr with “Boycott Qatar” in the subject line.

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