Qatari Foreign Minister: Campaigns to boycott the World Cup are hypocrisy that ignores what we have achieved

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani defended his country's right to host the 2022 World Cup. He considered the smear campaigns led by some parties "unfortunate" and "double standards."

Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said that the reasons put forward for boycotting the soccer World Cup, which his country is hosting on November 20, are "not correct."

This came in an interview conducted by the Qatari minister with the French newspaper Le Monde yesterday, Thursday, in response to the criticism targeting Doha, two weeks before the start of the World Cup.

Al-Thani said: "The reasons given for boycotting the World Cup are not correct. There is a lot of hypocrisy in these attacks that ignore everything we have achieved."

He added: "These allegations are being promoted by a very small number of people in ten countries at the most, which are not at all representative of the rest of the world... in fact it is unfortunate."

He pointed out that "the world is looking forward to this event, and more than 97% of tickets have been sold. Among the top ten countries that bought the largest number of tickets are European countries such as France."

In response to a question: Why did Qatar wait until 2020 to abolish the sponsorship law (the system that binds workers to their bosses) even though it was granted the right to organize the World Cup in 2010, the Qatari minister said: "We have become aware of the issues related to workers' welfare and even invited NGOs to attend. and monitor our system.

He continued, "We have come a long way to reform our legislation. These reforms take time. This applies to any country around the world, and is not unique to Qatar."

He stressed that "there are still defects, and we are determined to fix them."

Al-Thani added, "But why is the blame being systematically placed on our government for these problems, while in Europe, in the smallest incident, the company is blamed? Why this double standard?"

And he added, "I think some people do not accept that a small country in the Middle East hosts such a global event."

Regarding allegations that Doha concealed the true number of workers who died during the preparations for the World Cup, the Qatari foreign minister said: "Every death is a tragedy. In Qatar, we collect and publish death figures every year, with differences by age, sex, cause of death and type of work."

He added, "Of course the majority of these deaths are not related to work. It reflects the demographic picture of Qatar, which has a very diverse population. We are reviewing this data to get the exact number of work deaths. It is clear that the numbers reported by the media are false or misleading."

And on Tuesday, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said that his country has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign since it won the honor of hosting the World Cup, which no host country has faced.

He stressed that this campaign "contains slander and double standards until it reached such a ferocity that many people unfortunately wonder about the real reasons and motives behind this campaign."

Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup between November 20 and December 18, with the participation of 32 teams.

This is the first time that a country in the Middle East and the Arab world will host the largest and most famous tournament in the world of football.