BBC Reporters Detained In Qatar For Reporting About Migrant Working Conditions

The FIFA World Cup will take place in Qatar in 2022, and journalists from all over the world have descended upon the Middle East nation. The journalists, though, have arrived, not only to cover preparations for the world soccer championship, instead reporting on the country’s many human rights concerns.

General Secretary for the International Trade Union Confederation Sharan Burrow said about the conditions in Qatar:

“Qatar is a slave state. The discrimination, the racism, the denial of rights for 1.4 million migrant workers adds up to apartheid and a model of employment that is simply slavery. There is a conspiracy of silence by governments and major sporting and cultural institutions that allow it to continue. The world must not be duped by Qatar’s empty promises of reform,”

BBC reporters, covering the human rights concerns facing millions in Qatar, found themselves detained by government officials in Qatar, Fox Sports reported. The reporters were stopped as they traveled through Qatar. Their equipment was confiscated, and each of BBC reporters was interrogated. The reporters were eventually released.

Denying the allegations against its reporters, BBC said in a statement,

“We are pleased that the BBC team has been released but we deplore the fact that they were detained in the first place. Their presence in Qatar was no secret and they were engaged in a perfectly proper piece of journalism,”

Despite the BBC‘s claims that its reporters were there in an appropriate journalism capacity, the government of Qatar felt differently about the incident and felt fully justified. In a statement from the government of Qatar,

“The Government Communications Office invited a dozen reporters to see – first hand – some sub-standard labor accommodation as well as some of the newer labor villages. We gave the reporters free rein to interview whomever they chose and to roam unaccompanied in the labor villages. Perhaps anticipating that the government would not provide this sort of access, the BBC crew decided to do their own site visits and interviews in the days leading up to the planned tour. In doing so, they trespassed on private property, which is against the law in Qatar just as it is in most countries. Security forces were called and the BBC crew was detained.”

Mark Lobel documented in a BBC article what the reporters went through when they were detained by the Qatar government. The article stated:

“Our arrest was dramatic. We were on a quiet stretch of road in the capital, Doha, on our way to film a group of workers from Nepal. The working and housing conditions of migrant workers constructing new buildings in Qatar ahead of the World Cup have been heavily criticized and we wanted to see them from ourselves.

“Suddenly, eight white cars surrounded our vehicle and directed us on to a side road at speed. A dozen security officers frisked us in the street, shouting at us when we tried to talk. They took away our equipment and hard drives and drove us to their headquarters.

“Later in the city’s main police station, the cameraman, translator, driver and I were interrogated separately by intelligence officers. The questioning was hostile. We were never accused of anything directly, instead they asked over and over what we had done and who we had met.”

This latest controversy is among many others since Qatar was selected to host the World Cup in 2022, as reported by the Inquisitr.

[Photo credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images News]