• Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.
• Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.
• Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.
• Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.
• About 30 Nepalese sought refuge at their embassy in Doha to escape the brutal conditions of their employment.
I have to object to The Guardian's use of scare quotes in the title...
I lived and worked in Qatar and none of this is new to me. These people are treated in horrible conditions and I don't think Qataris have a second thought about it. They genuinely believe they are superior people and are permitted to do this to those lower than them (I am generalizing, yes, there are some good people there, but this is the most pervasive mindset. Just look up horror stories of how Filipina maids are treated in Qatari households. Rape victimes are at the Philippines embassy there every day trying to get help).
It was a really terrible place, don't be seduced by the media coverage gushing about their wealth. It's very easy to be
This is a government that charges fines from their red light cameras in excess of a year of a laborer's salary. They then require an "exit visa" to depart the country, and you can't get the exit visa until all your debts are paid, and your employer gives you one. I knew of Sri Lankan cab drivers who were trapped for years in Qatar trying to pay off their fines so they could leave.
Even as a professional American your employer can abuse you if they feel like it thanks to the "exit visa" requirement. Oh, you're quitting? Fine, I'll keep your last paycheck, here's your exit visa. Nobody should take a country that has an "exit visa" requirement seriously! I could not deal with the pressure of my freedom literally being in my employers hands. I did not last there very long in this environment, I am never going back to that hellhole.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I wonder how many expats would be in Qatar or Dubai in the first place if it weren't for the 0% income tax.
Speaking of Dubai...
"Norwegian woman sentenced to prison in Dubai for the crime of unlawful sex with her alleged rapist"
"Australian Alicia Gali reported being brutally raped while working at a hotel in the Unite Arab Emirates 2008, spent eight months in a fetid and overcrowded jail cell after (she says) being tricked into signing a confession."
This is one of the biggest reasons I can't wait for alternative energy sources to become more prevalent. The Middle East will sink back into irrelevance.
> It was always a stupid idea to have footballers running around in temperatures >100F
I assume they could probably get some strong evaporation cooling from the well-hydrated field, but I am not really familiar with that sort of extreme climate.
> plans to develop giant artificial remotely controlled "clouds" made up of high-tech materials that will be positioned between the blistering sun and the still-to-be-built football stadiums in the Gulf emirate.
I grew up in the Palm Springs area (summers regularly in the 100-125F range), and played soccer my entire life, through the summer. It's absolutely possible to do it, although it is not fun. The issue is that you have to hydrate completely differently, and to be fair, our substitution rules were different (unlimited subs, and you could be subbed back in), so players who have never played in that environment are at risk. Also, it gave us an extreme home field advantage whenever clubs from the California coast came into town to play.
I now understand that they are not using scare quotes in this case (which is what my mistaken objection was to), but I don't think that would be hack journalism. They still don't quote like that for the phrase "sex slave" for instance.
I don't think your point is clear here. It seems from comments that people think you think The Guardian is using "slave" incorrectly, while it seems like you object to the use of quotes around the word.
I don't think its scare tactics at all. All of middle east is like this. Saudi Arabia, Dubai everywhere they need workers for construction or such. They "import" workers from Bangaldesh, India, Pakistan etc, take their passport away and make them live and work in horrible conditions. Many people die or commit suicide too.
> I have to object to The Guardian's use of scare quotes in the title...
I don't think this is scare quotes, more like conservative British journalism that handles any story-relevant term delicately by emphasizing it's a quotation, and not their interpretation. I've seen it lots in the BBC: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0...
You're absolutely correct -- "scare quotes" are an element of American English, not British English. In this context, they're simply indicative of the fact that somebody (not the paper) has called these workers "slaves".
Two countries divided by a common language, as they say. When I moved to the UK from America, this was admittedly one of the more confusing points of differentiation for me.
(American) Usually when I see it intended as a quote in the headline, the "says X named official" is either in the headline or in the lede, which will basically just be an expansion of the headline anyway. Often though, that's not the case, and there's palpable sarcasm associated with the quote. (I've come to dislike that style of writing stories.)
I associate that style of writing more with magazines than newspapers, though I suppose I don't read a lot of physical newspapers these days and maybe there is a plague of sarcastic headlines on news articles that I'm just not aware of.
I don't read printed newspapers, but do see it a lot online. I haven't noticed any particular sources which seem to be rabid abusers (other than the obvious, like rt and fox, which I ignore anyway).
I don't care what they think, I consider it slavery, and so should everybody. Cultural relativism can go to hell when we are talking about fucking forced labor. I am not going to dampen my language just because they think forced labor is just fine, and neither should The Guardian.
Huh? You objected to Guardian using "scare quotes" or something and I told that this type of abuse happens there all the time. Human rights don't exist.In fact, several of them have been arrested for pulling the same crap in USA http://www.kbur.com/2013/09/20/saudi-princess-scheduled-to-b...
"Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase to imply that it may not signify its apparent meaning or that it is not necessarily the way the quoting person would express its concept. Thus, the quotes are used to establish a use–mention distinction, in a similar way as verbally prefixing a phrase with "so-called". When referred to as "scare quotes", the quotation marks are suggested to imply skepticism or disagreement with the quoted terminology."
You can always narrow a concept to exclude members of a set if you are allowed to declare your preferred definition, but the general use of the word slave obviously includes forced labourers who are being denied wages and held against their will while being worked to death and denied water, to argue otherwise would seem to make an utter mockery of the term.
I'm not sure it's helpful to call this actual slavery. Actual slavery is when human beings are legally owned by others.
This is not actual slavery, but it is atrocious working conditions and very serious human rights violations. The conditions may approach slave-like conditions, so there's good reason to use the word, but quotation marks are probably accurate. This is journalism, after all, not propaganda. (But, you definitely make a good point.)
The distinction is purely academic, and worthless for real-world use. Sex slaves in America or the UK are not legally owned, but they are nevertheless slaves as far as anybody sane-minded is concerned. You would not dream of referring to them as "Sex 'slaves'".
Particularly, The Guardian has not made this distinction in the past, search for "site:theguardian.com sex slaves"
(Further note that one of the methods of coercion being used in Qatar, taking the persons documentation and putting them in an immigration bind, is famous for being used in the sex slave industry)
I disagree with your assumption that sex slaves aren't by definition 'slaves' because they aren't legally owned. They are bought and sold (from what I've learned at the movies) so to me they are actual slaves.
Note also that his emphasis was on legally, not on "owned": It's not legal to buy and sell people, therefore one cannot legally own slaves. The fact that people exchange money for them, and treat them as property, does not make it legal, but their treatment definitely makes it slavery.
Chattel slavery requires ownership and is a specific form of slavery which was common in the US. Its manifestation requires slaves to be treated as property by the legal system.
Slavery has other forms, and being held in captivity for reasons other than legal punishment and forced to work generally is considered one of them.
It might very well be actual slavery. The "recruiters" are probably not employees of the company that commissions the labor, instead they are selling these men to companies who then "rent" them out.
This comes very close to a proprietary relationship, and it's even partly supported by the legal system which helps to keep the workers/slaves in their miserable "employment" relationship.
• Evidence of forced labour on a huge World Cup infrastructure project.
• Some Nepalese men have alleged that they have not been paid for months and have had their salaries retained to stop them running away.
• Some workers on other sites say employers routinely confiscate passports and refuse to issue ID cards, in effect reducing them to the status of illegal aliens.
• Some labourers say they have been denied access to free drinking water in the desert heat.
• About 30 Nepalese sought refuge at their embassy in Doha to escape the brutal conditions of their employment.
I have to object to The Guardian's use of scare quotes in the title...