The story of three African immigrants: "In Qatar people literally work themselves to death"

The World Cup in Qatar continues its course and the global fans vibrate with emotion with the semifinals at the gates.

The small country on the Persian Gulf sees it as a success and has even said it would like to consider hosting the 2036 Olympic Games. But not everyone shares that enthusiasm.

This World Cup has been possible, to a large extent, thanks to the migrant workforce.

They have built stadiums, worked as security guards and maintenance technicians among other occupations.

They have often done so in abusive conditions and labor exploitation and thousands of them have even died on the job site, according to numerous human rights organizations that have been denouncing them for years.

The European Parliament has called for compensation for the families of the victims.

The Qatari authorities recognize between 400 and 500 deaths,

but they accuse the press of wanting to cloud the success of the World Cup by emphasizing human rights violations.

Other investigations put the number at least 6,500.

EL PAÍS has interviewed three workers who traveled from Africa to work in Qatar and whose testimony evidences the abuses to which migrants have been subjected.

Security guard and activist: "There is blood in the stadiums that are seen on television"

Malcolm Bidali, has worked as a security guard in Qatar.

EL PAÍS met him in a cafeteria in Nairobi, where he shares his story.

Dressed in a hoodie from the St. Pauli football club in Hamburg, he talks about the situation of migrant workers in Qatar.

How he and other migrant workers were mistreated, leading to his arrest by the Qatari security service.

Bidali says that he has no regrets.

"I will not be silenced."

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The dead of the World Cup who went into debt to buy their job

“Before I went to Qatar I was broke.

In the economic sense, but also mentally.

She was unemployed and trying to make ends meet with odd jobs and racketeers.

Life in Kenya is hard for many people.

There's not enough work for everyone, and if you don't have connections, you can't find a job anywhere.”

The opportunity came to him from the hand of a friend of his from school who had worked in Dubai.

“He got me a job as a security guard for a company in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

The two years I worked there were good.

He lived with other migrants in a fenced residential area.

We had a big house and we could make our own ugali [Kenyan cornmeal cake] in the kitchen.”

The second time he traveled to Qatar to work, the experience was not so good.

“That time it was with another company.

Everything was fatally organized.

They put us up in a workers' camp in the industrial zone of Doha, which is practically a suburb, or what they call an 'informal settlement'.

The living conditions there were terrible.

The food was very bad, and there was mold on the walls and bugs under the mattresses.

We were crammed into four-foot-square rooms with six men, with virtually no space between my bunk and the person next to me.

I tried to isolate myself at night by writing a diary about how badly we were treated.”

Bidali started blogging under the pseudonym

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Among other things, he recounted that many security guards worked 12-hour days and that “we fainted from the extreme heat in which we had to carry out our work.

In Qatar people literally work themselves to death."

His blog posts ended up putting him in the crosshairs of the Qatari security services.

“My phone was hacked when I opened an unsecured link, which revealed my identity to the authorities.”

On May 4, 2021, they arrested him and kept him in solitary confinement for a month, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, some of the organizations that campaigned for his release.

Then came a month of interrogations.

“I had no contact with the outside world and they never provided me with a lawyer.

He was very scared.

On three occasions I was sure they were going to kill me.

They did not release me until the humanitarian organizations put pressure on me”.

He had to pay a bail of 6,441 euros, his mobile phone was confiscated and his social networks were blocked —Twitter and Instagram.

During his detention, he was not given access to a lawyer and no formal charges were filed against him, according to the coalition of international human rights organizations that lobbied for his release.

The Qatari authorities also refused during this time to inform Bidali's family of his whereabouts.

Returning to Kenya, Bidali created a small organization called Migrant Defenders, where together with Aidah, who worked as a domestic worker in Bahrain, they try to prevent further abuses against migrant workers in the Gulf countries and throughout the Middle East.

“If we can empower them and educate them about where they stand, we can work together as one group and stand up for our rights.

Much is made of the number of migrant workers who have died.

Is it 6,000 or 10,000?

And I say: how many people have to die for you to care?

Is it not enough for you that one life be lost through negligence?

His experience has not made him give up the World Cup.

He is one of those who thinks that the boycott is not going to change anything.

“I like soccer, so I watch the World Cup in Qatar, although it depends on which team plays.

It makes no sense to boycott the championship.

Do you think that Qatar is going to lose sleep thinking that maybe it can lose money?

Governments continue to do business with it.

Only they can achieve real change."

Although he admits that sometimes it is not easy.

“Psychologically, it is hard for me to see a game played in a stadium built by people who have not been paid, who have been away from their families for five years, who have suffered discrimination and who may have even died in the works.

Because that is the reality: there is blood in the stadiums that are seen on television”.

Workers stand against the backdrop of the Qatar capital Doha skyline as they walk along the city's waterfront on Nov. 17 ahead of the start of the Qatar 2022 World Cup. MARIANA SUAREZ (AFP via Getty Images)

Bricklayer: “Because of the World Cup there is almost no work anymore.

The government doesn't want visitors to see us."

Another Kenyan worker agrees to share his story, but on the condition that his identity be protected.

He is still stuck in Qatar and fears reprisals.

He communicates with this newspaper through encrypted messages and calls on a secure line, fearful that the Qatari security services will arrest him.

He long ago made an appeal on social networks pleading for help.

"I'm being mistreated," he said in his initial message.

He still works illegally in Qatar, because he claims the company that initially employed him confiscated his passport after a dispute over sick leave.

In Nairobi he signed a contract with a company that needed people in Qatar for different types of jobs such as security guards or bricklayers.

“There are many companies like that.

In Nairobi everywhere you can find billboards saying there are jobs available for Kenyans in countries like Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia,” she explains.

He signed a contract to work as a bricklayer in Qatar.

The agreement established that he could also work as a security guard or in the hotel business.

“They paid for my flight, my accommodation and food in the capital, Doha.

But when I arrived in Qatar, I soon found out that they wanted to pay us as little as possible: the money they paid us was decided by themselves.

If we made a mistake while working on the site, or if we worked too slowly, our wages would be cut.”

He worked for that company for a year or so, “but I hardly made any money at all.”

“One day I got sick and my boss took me to the hospital, where I stayed for a week.

When I returned to work, the boss informed me that I would not be paid for those days because I had been absent.

That made me furious, but they didn't back down."

Together with five other colleagues they decided not to return to work.

“Friends told me to file a claim against the company with the Qatar Labor Rights Commission, so I tried, but some companies are untouchable.

The commission looks at what company it is and sends you away with an excuse.

They ignored me.

The human rights organizations said they had been working on my case for months, but I have not heard anything about it.

The Kenyan embassy is paralyzed, does not respond.

There came a time when I was so fed up, that I decided not to continue fighting ”, he laments.

The worker assures that the company still has his passport, despite the fact that he has not worked for them for three years.

“They don't want to pay me back, so the last few years I've been working here illegally, mostly as a construction worker.

I often borrow the identity card from a friend, since no one looks at it.

Although the working conditions are hard, I am paid much more than in Kenya.

For one day I earn about 100 rials (around 26 euros)”.

This African immigrant explains how life has changed for immigrants since the World Cup began.

“Because of the World Cup there is almost no work anymore.

The government doesn't want visitors to see their buildings being put up by migrant workers, so there's no building anywhere.

The workers who, like me, are self-employed and who have to rent a house, have been evicted from the city.

The only emigrants who do not move are those who have families”.

He details that before they lived in small houses called "dormitory spaces."

They consisted of a room in which 10 people slept.

“But now we have been banished to the periphery, where living conditions are even worse.

We have to live where we cannot be seen, in places where there are not even jobs”.

And he continues: “So now I don't earn anything.

I can barely buy food, and my landlord threatens to evict me for not paying rent.

The situation was no longer good before the World Cup started, but now we are having an even worse time”.

The worker sees no way out of his situation.

“The day I will turn myself in to the police is getting closer and closer.

It's my only way out.

They will stop me, lock me up and call the company I worked for.

They will hand over my passport so they can expel me from the country.

I really want to go home, but I don't want to go back to Kenya without money.

If I do, all these years here will have been for nothing."

Cleaner: "Modern slavery is practiced in Qatar"

The Africans who have traveled to Qatar to try their luck are not just men.

A Kenyan woman shares her story.

She also does not dare to make her identity public.

She has returned to Kenya, but she fears the consequences for her friends and family still working in Qatar.

This newspaper spoke to her by phone and later verified her account through a local human rights organization.

She first worked in Saudi Arabia, where she ended up being trafficked and employed as a sex worker.

In Qatar, she discovered that people did not treat her any better.

“No matter how you look at it, there is modern day slavery in Qatar.

Because even if you earn money, you don't have freedom, ”she says.

“My mother tried to convince me.

She told me to go to Saudi Arabia, that I could earn money there quickly and that things were much better than in my country.

I said no three times, but on the fourth, I gave in.

I didn't mind, because the cousins ​​who were already there told me very nice stories.

But, upon arrival, it turned out that none of that was true.

During the day she worked as a seamstress, her profession in Kenya.

She made curtains, pillowcases, and sheets.

But below the building she worked in was a large basement.

Many visitors came at night.

“Three months after my arrival in Riyadh, I found out: migrant women were forced to work as prostitutes in the basement.

I had to go twice, and they forced me to have sexual relations with men and women.

It was a terrible experience

When he returned to Kenya, he vowed never to return to an Arab country again, but in Nairobi he had no job, and life was hard.

“In Qatar, domestic workers who do cleaning tasks are well paid.

I earned 1,000 Qatari riyals a month (just over 250 euros).

If you are lucky and find a good family or a good company, there is nothing to worry about.

I heard relatives and friends tell stories like this and even saw that some had built a house with the money they had earned in the Gulf countries.

To survive, I went to Doha, this time to work as a cleaner."

He soon discovered that Qatar was not paradise.

“I had to work all week, 16 or sometimes 20 hours a day.

There were days when I went to bed at two in the morning and had to get up at four to go to work.

They didn't care in the least.

Whichever way you look at it, modern day slavery is practiced in Qatar.

Even if you earn money, you are deprived of all freedom.

They don't have you chained, but they have you so oppressed that you have the impression of being.

The chains exist in your mind.

Lots of work, they only let you eat their leftovers and never let you decide anything for yourself.

That's not life."

This worker looked for a way out.

“I got sick and pretended that she was crazy.

As if there were evil spirits in my head.

That was also how I left Saudi Arabia.

It is a matter of perseverance;

first I had to act in front of my boss and then in front of the Qatari authorities.

It wasn't until I was at the airport, at the boarding gate, that I stopped pretending and finally dared to go back to how I normally am.

It was very hard, but if you have to save yourself to see your family again, you have to overcome yourself in order to survive.

You have to be strong.

Because if you can't, you'll come home in a coffin.

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