At the upcoming World Cup, the Dutch national team will present a ‘social action’ aimed at improving the position of migrant workers in Qatar. It is not yet clear what exactly that action will look like, said Gijs de Jong, secretary general of the KNVB at a meeting in Zeist.
“We already have a number of ideas. We present them to the players and then they can indicate what they do or do not want to do,” said De Jong. “We try to cooperate with other countries as much as possible.”
De Jong referred to previous final tournaments of Orange. At the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, the internationals visited Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for years. Two years later, at the European Championship of 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, then national coach Bert van Marwijk and his players went to the former concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 1 million people were killed during the Second World War. At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the selection of coach Louis van Gaal visited the favela Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro.
Several human rights organizations and institutions want a substantial improvement of human rights, women, labor migrants and LGBTI persons in Qatar. Standing at a mosque in Qatar with ten men with rainbow flags is not what the football association has in mind. “We are not out to provoke, we are out for change,” said De Jong.