Interior Minister Faeser and DFB President Neuendorf are planning a difficult balancing act in Qatar: on the one hand, increase the pressure on the World Cup hosts, but on the other hand not completely annoy him.
The SPD Minister responsible for top-class sport spoke to the Secretary General of the World Cup Organizing Committee, Hassan al-Thawadi, in the Qatari capital of Doha.
Before the start of Faeser’s visit, the Qatari government had complained because the German sports minister had publicly criticized the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar. Ahead of her scheduled meeting with Qatari Prime Minister and Interior Minister Khalid bin Chalifa Al-Thani, Faeser said she did not believe this would overshadow her visit to the Arab country. You always have one “clear attitude” shown. and “In my view, that doesn’t matter here”Faeser said.
After the meeting, it was said from delegation circles that the Minister of the Interior had received a security guarantee for all fans, especially members of the LGBTIQ community, from the Prime Minister.
According to information from delegation circles, Al-Thawadi said he regretted that the Federal Government’s Human Rights Commissioner, Luise Amtsberg, canceled her trip to Qatar at short notice. Participants reported that the meeting with the head of the organizing committee took place in a friendly atmosphere. Amtsberg had canceled her trip, which should have started at the weekend, because the extent of the upset in Qatar was still unclear at the time, according to Faeser’s statements.
CDU politician urges restraint
Jürgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesman for the Union parliamentary group in the Bundestag, considers the massive criticism of host country Qatar in the run-up to the World Cup (November 20 to December 18) to be the wrong approach.
“I urge restraint”said the CDU politician in the ZDF morning show: “If we want to make a difference for the people in the region, if we want to change the human rights situation, we should bet that more might be possible afterwards than relying on a major confrontation now.”
Hardt described Faeser’s trip, in which DFB President Bernd Neuendorf is also taking part, as “correct” – also with regard to German interests: “There are a number of diplomatic points of contact.”
Lots of complaints about unpaid wages
Unpaid wages remain a major problem for Qatar’s many migrant workers. The number of complaints doubled within a year to 34,425, as the United Nations International Labor Organization (ILO) announced on Tuesday shortly before the World Cup. The increased number is also the result of a new online platform on which workers can register.
“Most of the complaints concern unpaid wages or severance pay, as well as ungranted or unpaid annual leave”, says the report. 10,500 cases ended up before an arbitral tribunal, in almost all of which the workers were right. The ILO again called on Qatar to implement reforms. The number of guest workers who had to be treated because of the enormous heat on construction sites in the summer months, on the other hand, fell.
According to the report, 351 workers were still being treated in Red Crescent clinics in the summer of 2022, down from 620 (2021) and 1,520 (2020). Comprehensive restrictions were introduced in 2021. According to the ILO, the “significant” Reforms also affect the entire Gulf region. “However, there is a widespread belief that more needs to be done. We all know that we are not yet at the finish line.”said Ruba Jaradat, ILO Bureau Chief for the Arab States.