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Lise Klaveness: Norwegian football president disrupts Gianni Infantino's show

2022-03-31T14:54:42.444Z


At the Fifa Congress in Doha, President Gianni Infantino once again praised the World Cup hosts Qatar and avoided the word "war" in connection with Ukraine. A woman showed him his limits.


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The President of the Norwegian Football Association Lise Klaveness at the Fifa Congress in Doha, Qatar

Photo: Hassan Ammar/AP

The Norwegian association president Lise Klaveness has asked the congress of the world football association Fifa to change the way human rights and diversity are dealt with.

“Fifa must act as a role model,” said Klaveness, 40, during the Doha General Assembly.

Everyone must be treated “with the same respect”.

The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was awarded to the emirate in 2010 under “unacceptable circumstances and with unacceptable consequences”.

The World Cup host has been criticized for years because of the human rights situation and the conditions for foreign workers.

"Fifa has addressed these things, but there is still a long way to go," said Klaveness, in whose association a boycott of the World Cup had been discussed last year.

"Fifa must take all measures to bring about change." Klaveness cited the rights of the LGBT+ community - including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual people, as well as human rights, diversity and anti-discrimination - as examples.

The call seemed to bounce off Fifa President Gianni Infantino.

Although he called for peace, he avoided naming the Russian war of aggression as such.

“Enter dialogue with even your worst enemy.

Football will be there for you to work together for peace,” he said full of pathos – and just as urgently praised the controversial host of the World Cup (November 21 to December 18) this year.

"Qatar may be a small country, but the heart of Qatar is so big that it welcomes the whole world," Infantino enthused.

World Cup organization chief Hassan Al-Thawadi reacted annoyed.

"Madam President comes to our country and has not tried to contact us and has not tried to start a dialogue," he said.

He pointed out that international organizations such as trade unions had attested progress.

“We have always been open to dialogue.

It's about discussions.

We have always maintained open doors, the doors are open for everyone before making a judgement."

Praise from the DFB, nothing more

The new DFB President Bernd Neuendorf, on the other hand, chose a passive role, even if he praised the Klaveness speech afterwards.

»I think it's good that the discussion takes place openly on stage and that these questions are dealt with.

You can do it like this,” said the 61-year-old.

Neuendorf went on to say that he himself wanted to make appointments with experts during his trip to Doha: “I want to have talks first and try to get information freely.

That's just as important.

We don't dive into the subject, but make sure that we first get a serious picture of the situation ourselves.« This is his own »claim«, but he held back with criticism of Infantino.

Video message from Ukrainian federation president

In order to document the supposed progress, an almost ten-minute video was also shown.

"Without the projection surface of this World Cup, none of the changes would have taken place," said Infantino.

And anyway, the winter tournament will be the "best World Cup ever", a "big show" and also "played at the best time of the year," he added.

Infantino did not respond to the video message from the President of the Ukrainian Association Andriy Pawelko.

'We don't want to hear an air raid alarm, we want fan chants again.

We want full stadiums again instead of bombed cities - that's our goal," said Pawelko in his video message and received comparatively restrained applause in the hall.

Perhaps football could help "put this terrible war behind us someday".

Sharp criticism from human rights activists

There had already been sharp criticism from human rights activists.

Infantino behaves "like a propaganda show spokesman for the Qatar government," Wenzel Michalski of Human Rights Watch told Sky.

Just this week, Amnesty International once again pointed out abuses in the extremely wealthy emirate.

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Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2022-03-31

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