Most of the world doesn’t care about half-hearted gestures in Qatar

Imagine playing sport in a country where homosexuality is illegal and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment! Where blasphemy is punishable by death! Where you can be thrown in jail for drinking alcohol in public! And don’t forget to dress modestly. Bare shoulders? Shorts? No-nos.

Yes, when England’s cricketers and supporters arrive in Pakistan this weekend they must tread carefully. But must they also follow the example of the England football team and declare their unwavering support for calling out discrimination whenever and wherever it is found? And must the British media use this three-match Test tour to test Pakistan’s liberal credentials and workers’ rights?

It seems not. Nor must the team, or the media, know that last year in the UAE, where the cricketers have been sojourning en route to Pakistan, several thousand migrant workers perished.

Does this mean the furore over human rights in Qatar is hypocritical? A bit. What about whataboutery? Not really. It is not deflecting from Qatar’s refusal to allow people to freely choose how they live to point out that Pakistan does the same. But it does make the silence about the cricket tour and human rights a little louder.

FIFA head Gianni Infantino likes a bit of silence on these matters. At the start of football’s World Cup finals in Qatar he said human rights are not advanced by shouting. In a remarkable display of self-identification, he also told a stunned audience that “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.” He displayed his empathetic credentials for understanding what it is like to fear death because of your sexuality by telling us he was discriminated against as a child due to his red hair and freckles. A SoundCloud of words showing the response to his views would have “Crass” at the centre.

He’s wrong. Criticism of Qatar (and Infantino) is right, but there’s an argument that Qatar has been singled out for more criticism than we have seen elsewhere.

Denmark’s players are wearing shirts with “toned down” logos because they, and their sponsor, “don’t wish to be visible during a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives”. This was not the case in the 2018 World Cup in Russia despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The England team played in that competition just weeks after the Russian state killed a British citizen in Wiltshire. Focus on China’s abysmal human rights record ahead of the Beijing Olympics soon dissipated once the games began. There were no public demonstrations of distaste during the 1978 World Cup finals in Argentina then led by a military junta. The Australian team has released a video urging Qatar to abolish its same-sex laws. We can look forward to them doing something similar ahead of the 2026 World Cup to highlight that US federal law defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

This is not to say these gestures are wrong, more that they are inconsistent. They are also of limited use.

The photo of the German players putting their hands over their mouths after caving in to FIFA threats of reprisals if any wore the OneLove armband sent a strong message around the world, but that doesn’t mean it resonated. In Latin America, Russia, the Central Asian Republics, the Middle East, China, Africa, and elsewhere, the debate we are having in Western Europe is background noise. Articles suggesting Qatar wants the world to look at it with admiration, but instead is glaring, are only half right.

And the protests are half-hearted. England’s captain, Harry Kane was going to wear the OneLove armband in the team’s opening game against Iran. Six other European teams had similar plans. They quickly crumbled under FIFA pressure. Kane would have been booked for the “offence” and then if booked again would have been sent off. So, the message they ended up sending was that the commitment to human rights played second fiddle to qualifying for the next round of the tournament.

Criticism of Qatar at state level has also been muted, tempered perhaps by the flow of Qatari Liquid Natural Gas pouring into our gas reserves to make up the shortfall of Russian energy and keep our homes warm this winter.

The Iran team showed real bravery in the face of human rights violations. During the Iranian national anthem not a single player sang the words, even as their fans in the stadium jeered the anthem in a display of contempt for the regime back home which is busy murdering hundreds of citizens.

As for FIFA – rarely has such an international organisation been regarded with such contempt and distaste. The only mistakes its senior officials seem to care about are errors in the number of zeroes in their bank accounts.

At this early stage my guess is that globally this World Cup will be remembered for two things – neither of them the human rights issue. First, this is the World Cup where we can see how globalisation, and the modernisation of football associations, has levelled the playing field. Morocco drew with Croatia, Japan beat Germany, and Saudi Arabia beat Argentina! The benefits of funding football youth academies, and the experience of players from around the world playing in the best leagues, are bearing fruit.

The other legacy is that Qatar moves out of the shadow of its giant neighbour Saudi Arabia which used to treat Qatar as a vassal state. In the worlds of energy politics and international relations it has long been a player – this tournament showcases on the world stage its independence, its power, and its prowess. That’s what it paid for when it bought the finals.

The opprobrium of a handful of countries, even if justified, won’t change that.

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