The Gulf state of Qatar, which faces isolation over its support of global terror, also deserves to be ostracized for its abysmal human rights record, the CEO and president of The Israel Project wrote Tuesday in the New York Daily News. The Israel Project publishes The Tower.
Aside from its support “for radical Islamist groups and movements,” Josh Block wrote, “the emirate is a 21st-century slave state and prolific human rights violator.”
According to the 2016 Global Slavery Index, an estimated 30,000 residents of Qatar — which has a total population of a little more than 2.2 million — live as slaves. (A survey produced by the Qatari government in 2015 said that roughly 60 percent of the kingdom’s residents live in “labor camps.”)
Qatar has come under international criticism in recent years over the harsh living and working conditions endured by its large migrant workforce, which is building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup competition and Qatar’s National Vision 2030 development plan. Qatar utilizes a system of labor known as kafala, under which migrant workers must have a sponsor in order to enter and leave the country, effectively rendering them fully dependent on their host companies. Documented abuses in the system include workers not being paid or having their wages significantly lowered, abysmal working and living conditions, sexual assault, and even death.
In 2010, the Philippine Overseas Labour Office had to protect some 600 runaway maids from Qatar. The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that by the time the World Cup begins in 2022, more that 4,000 migrants, largely “from Nepal, India and other South Asian and African countries,” will die on the job.
Perhaps because of its generous investment in Western nations, including over $50 billion in the United Kingdom and a planned $35 billion in unspecified projects in the United States, Qatar’s massive human rights abuses have largely been ignored.
“International pressure must be applied,” Block concluded. “Qatar’s rift with other Arab states is a good opportunity to rethink our allegiance with the emirate and do the right thing: hold the slave owners accountable for their crimes.”
[Photo: The Guardian / YouTube ]