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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and a special good morning to soccer fans with two big soccer stories in the news. Did you hear that it looks like there will be a new stadium near Citi Field for the NYCFC, New York City Football Club, Major League soccer team, that deal announce this week, and this weekend begins soccer's biggest moment that only comes around every few years globally, the World Cup soccer tournament?

Folks, this is not a sports story. This is a human rights and bigotry story that also comes with a challenge and a dilemma for all of us, including me, who like to watch the games. Here's the story. The 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup, as it's known, which begins this Sunday in Qatar has been years in the making. For soccer fans, it'll be an unusual one. Intense summer heat in the Gulf state nation means that this year's competition had to be scheduled for here in late autumn, in the middle of many domestic leagues seasons in the countries that send teams to the tournament.

More importantly, this World Cup has been mired in controversy, if you haven't followed this over the last few years, over FIFA's decision to award the games to Qatar at all, with its very questionable human rights record, including, as it relates directly to the games, to the exploitation, even reportedly thousands of deaths of migrant workers building the infrastructure to accommodate the tournament. The question is will you watch the Qatar World Cup, and football fans, soccer fans, does it deserve your fandom this year amid the controversy?

For a history of this Qatar World Cup and an overview of its humanitarian morass, I'm joined now by Dan Friedman, writer, digital consultant, and former executive editor of The Forward. Dan offers an answer for himself to one of those questions in an opinion essay titled, Why I'm Boycotting the World Cup in Qatar and So Should You. That's in Howler Magazine, an online publication that features stories about soccer. Hi, Dan. Welcome to WNYC. Glad you could join us.

Dan: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me.

Brian: Let's start at the beginning. How did Qatar, a country with little prominence in the footballing world, come to host the game's biggest competition?

Dan: Well, in short, we're not quite sure. There have been many allegations of bribery, but no direct smoking gun has ever been shown. What we do know, and some of your listeners will have heard Alex Capstick of the BBC reporting on it a few moments earlier, is that the FIFA structure was ripe for abuse. Of the 24 people on the executive committee voting for it, two were banned from voting on the bids before the World Cup bids because of corruption, and of the rest, about 2/3 were arrested or banned from football for corruption over the following five years. That includes Mohammed bin Hammam, the Qatari who is the president of the Asian Football Confederation.

We know that Qatar is extremely wealthy and they bought Paris Saint-Germaine, France's best soccer team. That's important for two reasons. First of all, Qatar committed to invest in France, which is why there are allegations, including by the disgraced former president of FIFA Sepp Blatter that President Sarkozy, now also convicted of corruption in a separate case, lobbied for the World Cup before, as Blatter puts it, Qatar buying fighter jets from the French for $14.6 billion. We'll come to the second reason in a bit later, I think.

Brian: Allegations on this first reason of outright bribery and corruption, that the World Cup was secured for Qatar through illicit means, but not quite proven, is what I think I hear you saying.

Dan: Yes, that's exactly right. Part of the problem is that the FIFA system-- part of the real disappointment for my part and disgrace, I think, for many people around the world is Qatar's involvement in this. The other thing is FIFA's terrible handling of it because one of the things that's become evident is that many of the people at the top of the football world were taking bribes and were corrupt in a pretty straightforward way.

Brian: Before we get to the even bigger human rights issues, just by way of background, why was Qatar interested in hosting these games? What have officials within the country made public about its motives?

Dan: They argue that they are extremely excited about soccer, and they have hosted a soccer sports network. BeIN SPORTS is their network and has shown a lot of soccer games. I think it's a pretty clear instance of sports washing, so where you put on a sporting event to project a friendly public image despite your actual behavior. Qatar has wealth from oil and gas, but it's a tiny country very close to Iran, both geographically and economically, and it has trouble actually distancing itself from Iran because the two countries share the world's largest natural gas field.

That's why it won't, for example, join the Abraham Accords like its neighbors in Bahrain or the UAE. How does it show that it should be allowed into the community of nations and that it's a wonderful place? Well, it buys into the beautiful game.

Brian: Listeners, if you follow soccer or football, as they call it everywhere around the world except here, will you be boycotting the Qatar World Cup, which begins on Sunday? 212-433-WNYC, or will you tune in despite these controversies, and we haven't even gotten yet, as I said to the Human Rights ones, and the ones having to do with treatment of women and LGBT people? Soccer or football fans, what are you looking forward to if you intend to watch?

Your questions also welcome for our guest Dan Friedman, writer, digital consultant and former executive editor of The Forward. He's author of an opinion essay, as I said at the top, titled, Why I'm Boycotting the World Cup in Qatar and So Should You, in Howler Magazine. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. In your article, you write, "It has taken more than 6,000 unnecessary deaths to make the FIFA Qatar World Cup and that's a step too far." 6,000 unnecessary deaths. Who died and how well is that number documented?

Dan: This is an important question, and it's one where there's not a clear answer partly because of some of the problems that I'll outline. What we do know is that the people who are building the World Cup and the massive infrastructure that's necessary to hold the World Cup are almost exclusively migrant workers in Qatar under the Kafala system, the sponsorship system. There's a huge number. There's hundreds of thousands of these people who are over there.

The 6,000 number comes from a Guardian report in February last year that talked about people from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. That's the 6,000 number that those countries had managed to find out that their co-nationals had died in those numbers. There are banners on German sports stadium that are holding up the number of 15,000 because those are the total number of migrant workers that have died over the past decade in building projects in Qatar.

The other number that's been thrown around is 37, which is the number of people who have died in accidents actually building the specific stadiums. We don't have great numbers from Qatar because the country is invested in us not knowing particularly about that, but somewhere between 37 and 15,000 we know that people have died putting together this World Cup.

Just to go back to the Willets Point, the New York City Football Club stadium, if even one person were to die in the building of that stadium, and please, God forbid, that should happen, I think that the construction would be halted immediately and massive questions will be asked. Even if it's only 37, not 6,000 or 15,000, I think we have to ask how many people have to die for this to be a bloody World Cup that should be boycotted.

Brian: Tell us about the potential risks for women and LGBTQ fans traveling to Qatar. What are those concerns and how have FIFA and Qatar addressed them?

Dan: In Qatar, it's illegal to be gay or to be any form of LGBTQ. The organizers have said that it's okay, come over, we'll be really nice and understanding, and it'll be fine, but as sports journalists have written, we don't actually know. There's not really any evidence that it will be fine. What we do know is that people have been imprisoned and tortured for being accused of homosexual acts. We know that there is a well-documented history of gay bashing that if people of the same sex are holding hands in public, that they're liable to be attacked.

We just don't know whether that is going to be the case if people visit Qatar for the World Cup. Really we shouldn't have to ask the question, will it be safe for a major sporting event like this? One of the reasons that FIFA says that it will give these tournaments out to different countries is to try and promote change and to try and make them a better, more tolerant place but that simply has not happened here in terms of LGBTQ rights in Qatar and the Kafala system, which I mentioned earlier, has been nominally reformed, but only in 2020. Many of the different problems with that system still endure and I can tell you more about that if you want to be more depressed.

Brian: Make me a little more depressed, then we're going to take some phone calls. Our board is full. Obviously in New York, we have listeners who originally come from all over the world. That's one of the reasons soccer is so big and growing here, and people are so excited about the new stadium in Queens, et cetera. Our board is jammed with callers who want to weigh in on this or ask you things. Go ahead and make us a little more depressed before we go to those calls.

Dan: A little more depressed, so the reason that the Kafala system is very bad is because migrant workers who come over from mostly the Indian subcontinent to work are totally at the mercy of their sponsors who are in almost all cases private construction businesses. What this means is that they're exploited, that they are out in the Qatar heat and exposed to terrible temperatures in ways that would be unthinkable in this country.

They have a lack of healthcare that there's extremely stringent ways in which they have to ask permission to go to the doctor and often they don't have access to healthcare, which is a long way away from where they live. They're a lack of rules and regulations about the safety in the construction. There's lack of information so transparency about how they're working.

They have terrible living conditions because the places they live are just put together very cheaply to make as much profit for these private construction companies as possible. There's a famous case of Mohammed Shahimia from Bangladesh who died when flood water in his room. The room was so badly constructed that it was flooded, and then it was so badly constructed that there was an exposed electric cable, which then killed him.

It only takes these dramatic events for us to find out about these terrible situations that they're in. He's someone who actually died of these bad conditions but we just don't know about the thousands of people who have extreme health conditions from them who have suffered from them but don't have extreme health conditions from them so it's a difficult situation.

Brian: John David in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, John David.

John David: Good morning, Brian. I'm French, so we are the defending champion, so obviously--

Brian: How to get that in there, didn't you?

John David: Yes. We are the world champion. I'm ashamed to say that I got to watch, I know it's been a lot of controversy and they build a stadium, which by the way, will be disassemble after the World Cup. I believe they are air conditioning so it's a massive waste of energy and the World Cup should be awarded to country who are soccer fan, and I say every time should be in Europe that country where soccer is part of the DNA. Then also, I don't think not a lot of people will go to Qatar to watch the game in person because it's so far, it's costly but at the end of the day. Anybody will tell you I'm not going to watch it. If you are European, you're going to watch it in secret or you're going to lie about it but--

Brian: Jean David, thank you. Congratulations on the championship in the last round, and also on your candor. I've been asking myself this question, and I'm sure a lot of people have as they come upon your article and other calls to boycott the games, even with their eyes on television, like this is really deserving of a boycott, but when I'm sitting in my living room and the game is on, the matches are on, and it's not going to change anything if I watch or if I don't, am I going to be able to resist? What do you say to those people?

Dan: One of the reasons that I wrote the piece was because I felt as if there had been a conversation in Europe about the ongoing disaster of FIFA's granting of the World Cup to Qatar. I felt that there hadn't really been that conversation in America, and I wanted to really put everything into one place so that people could understand what had gone on over the past 12 years, why Qatar is not a particularly good candidate for a World Cup final and so that if people were like John David and many, many of my friends watching the World Cup, that they will at least understand that there are things that they can do and should do, and be aware of about this World Cup that make it not just a glorious celebration of a beautiful game, but also an exploitation of migrant labor, a betrayal of women's rights and LGBTQ.

To be honest I do a lot of work for Dayenu, a Jewish Call to Climate Action, and so granting this particular event to a massive fossil fuel nation while we're suffering from the extreme weather conditions caused by climate change, just seems also a retrograde step by a major international sporting organization.

Brian: I'll take another call. Zenab on Staten Island, you're on WNYC. Hello, Zenab.

Zenab: Hi. I'm a South Asian woman, and I lived in the Middle East for a long time, and I'm really glad that this is being publicized. We've known for years that there is cheap labor from South Asia, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and that some of these individuals have lived on very extremely aversive conditions. Thank you for publicizing this. I think this is definitely worthy of condemnation and I do think that there should be a boycott given not just the victimization of impoverished people from South Asia, but also the misogyny and the homophobia, definitely worthy of condemnation. Thank you for that.

The only question that I have is that in recent years my understanding is that there was Olympics game in China and China's record on human rights. It's not what you would call commendable, particularly with the legal population, which according to news reports has been absolutely decimated. I think that would be nice if they could be maybe more egalitarianism in terms of condemnation and denunciation.

Again, thank you for doing this because I really do think that the plight of not just South Asian people, but in general a lot of those countries have got reprehensible human rights records, and this should be publicized, unfortunately for a lot of people moral considerations are not the determining factor when it comes to these kinds of things. I'm sure people will come up with some racialization to justify viewing this but again, thank you. This is--

Brian: Zaneb, thank you very much. We have other questions coming in from callers and on Twitter saying, "Well, this is horrible, everything that's been documented about Qatar but there are so many other human rights abuses in the world too. Zenab brings up well, the Olympics were held in China, and we didn't boycott that," somebody else is tweeting at us where to go. "What if folks abroad complained about extra judicial killings in America, hashtag Michael Brown, hashtag George Floyd." What do you say to any of those people?

Dan: I have a great deal of sympathy for all of those people. I think that the question really is where do you draw the line, and I think that if we can shine a light on all these unethical and human rights of abuses, I think that's a great thing. I think for me, really though, there was no justification for this particular event being held in Qatar. The Olympics in China or in Russia or even the World Cup in Russia, just to go back to John David's point before they were held in places that had a sporting history and had a certain claim to those events.

Whether they had human rights abuses or not and they do. What I would say is that Qatar is a desert peninsula, just a touch smaller than Connecticut in both size and population and it has no soccer history. There's no reason to hold the World Cup there. There's no audience that we're going to suddenly develop by holding the World Cup there. The other thing that's slightly obscure and just to go back to Zenab's point is that because it's across the other side of the world, we don't necessarily think that the migrant workers are of a different ethnicity, but there is also--

I think this was one of the things that Zenab was pointing at, was there's also a great degree of racism against these people from the Indian subcontinent. No reason to be there. Human rights abuses, racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ legislation, and a fossil fuel nation. It doesn't seem to be, so for every individual, you have to draw a line. For me, there doesn't seem to be any reason at all for this to be there and the number of deaths was just the line that I had to draw here.

Brian: Jeff and Williamsburg, says he was just in Qatar. Jeff, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jeff: Oh, hi. Long-time listener first-time caller. I've been calling with a bit of antidote and some guilt, but I come from the fashion industry and they had a huge or sponsored a huge fashion charity event there and I was there as capacity as a photographer, and so I just observed it the whole time. I guess the anecdote is sports is one element to up your reputation, but there's art, fashion, buying libraries. I've asked people if they've ever heard the term reputation laundering, because it's a broad term that gives someone an ability to make themselves look better, not just with sports.

Brian: Sports washing and you're saying fashion washing, if that's a term we can call. Dan, what do you say to Jeff?

Dan: I think this is a very specific-- I would say yes, the reason that Qatar needs to have the World Cup or wants to have the World Cup is for sports washing but the reputation laundry that it needs to do it can't properly do politically because of its relationship with Iran and because it is a fossil fuel nation, so it has to look at other and in other places and I didn't know that there had been a big fashion industry event there. I'm not surprised it makes sense that it would flash cash and bring people over to make it seem like it was a more liberal place than the rules and the laws on the books there actually say that it is.

Brian: Thank you for your call, Jeff. We appreciate it. I wonder if, as an adjunct to all this, there's a way in which this all shows up on the pitch on the field when the games begin. A massive soccer fan I know told me that so many important players will be missing from the World Cup this year due to injury, in part because the club teams that these players represent in their home countries had to play so many games in such a short period of time in their regular season to accommodate a November World Cup.

Now the competition usually takes place during the summer, once every four years like the Olympics, it was moved to late November into December because of the hot, hot, hot climate in Qatar. Do you think this strange controversial Qatar World Cup will lead to a strange display on the field in the tournament?

Dan: It's a good question and it's one that people have been asking. When the bid came up, the Qatar representatives assured everyone explicitly and on the record that it would definitely be a Summer World Cup and so this is just one of the many-- the fact that we're having this over Thanksgiving is, I consider another betrayal of the game by FIFA and Qatar. It feels like having Thanksgiving at Easter and I think that people are saying-- It has absolutely cut the season in half and made both halves of the season in Europe at least, much more intense.

There are always people injured before the World Cup because there are important games before the World Cup and although this has been a bit more intense, it's a matter of degree and not really, obviously. I think a lot of the important players will be there. I think what's more interesting on the field is whether people will protest, whether people will wear one love armbands, will wear rainbow laces. There's a Denmark shirt, which is black, which is not one of the country's colors, which is to protest the people who have died in the building of the stadium.

The beautiful game has billions of players. It has hundreds of extremely famous players. I think the drama on the pitch will be the drama on the pitch and I don't think this is really going to affect that much.

Brian: Are they playing on Thanksgiving Day? Is that going to be a television option?

Dan: I'm boycotting the World Cup Brian. I don't know.

Brian: The bigger choice for a lot of people in New York might be, wait, do I watch the World Cup or do I watch the Giants play The Cowboys?

Dan: I would say watch The Giants.

Brian: Cosmo in Manhattan is struggling with this call to boycott the World Cup on his television set. Cosmo, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Cosmo: Good morning, gentlemen. Tom and lifelong football fan, soccer fan originally from London. You can tell by my broken accent and it's really going to be a struggle. It's completely depressing. It's completely immoral. It's really outside of the actual footballers and the game itself. For me, there's nothing good to say about it, but it's the World Cup. I watch it every four years, it's fantastic. It's going to be really hard not to watch it and my friends will be watching some of them and my family, but I'm going to try and struggle through by not watching.

Brian: By not watching, you're going to try to do it, Cosmo. By the way, was that local soccer team named after you?

Cosmo: I believe so. Although, I wasn't here at the time to know for sure, but--

Brian: When we had The Cosmos around here. Thank you for your call. I appreciate it and I appreciate your struggle. One more. Abdul in Jersey City, you're on WNYC? Hi Abdul.

Abdul: Hi. Brian, how are you doing?

Brian: Good. I got you. Go ahead.

Abdul: Actually we watch it with pleasure, and your guest actually trying to politicize it, it's not a politics anymore and that's a good thing about soccer is out of politics. That's the thing we have to know because if it's come to human rights, we watch and we enjoy the NFL, which NFL has a lot of abuse, and concussions against Black people still enjoy that. Still the biggest organization in here, French organized the World Cup after all the [unintelligible 00:29:02] they did against human people in Africa.

We still watch it, we still watch League A or Seria A in France. We still watch it, but I hope they don't politicize it and if you got to watch the Word Cup or he didn't watch, it's still going to go on. About the corruption, the whole world is running on corruption, the UN, people buying voices in the UN Security Council, so there's no perfect place on earth and this is soccer so keep it away from politics.

Brian: Abdul, thank you. Thank you very much. What about that, keeping the World Cup out of politics? We also have another caller who says, "Is there a whiff of Islamophobia in this calling for the boycott of the games in Qatar when there's so much other corruption and human rights abuses elsewhere in the world that hold big events?"

Dan: The question of whether there's a whiff of Islamophobia is something that the Qatar of government has been very careful to promote as a way of defusing criticism. I think there is plenty of Islamophobia in the world. I think that the critiques that have been leveled against the Qatar World Cup, the Qatar Royal family, and the Qatar government are pretty clear and pretty divorced from the question of whether they're Islamic or based in Sharia law or the version of Sharia law that hold in Qatar.

I would say that we should always be careful of racism and of Islamophobia and antisemitism, but I think that's not actually a proper question here. As for politicization, I play soccer every week in New York with my players and that's definitely an apolitical game. I'm afraid that there's no way of getting past the inherent politicization of the World Cup and of the Olympics and of these other major sporting events.

As the caller pointed out, it's not just sporting events. I think there is a line to be drawn and I've now put myself out there as someone who's drawn a very specific and dramatic line. I've watched the World Cup since 1978 and I explained that in the piece. I also try and explain in the piece why this is a little bit different. I quote in words that I can't repeat on the radio, [unintelligible 00:31:52] explaining his take on that in 2014, even when things could have been changed and so even since his eruption.

He says that the NFL and sports team owners, he's grown up in America and understanding that these people do bad things. This is even in his mind different. Even in 2014 when there was time either for the Qatar government to change in policies or for FIFA to change their idea of where the World Cup should be. The fact that neither of those bodies have made any significant changes in the past eight years despite what we knew in 2010, what he knew in 2014 what's been an open secret for anyone who follows this stuff for 10 years. I think really is another part of what we call a shanda, a disgrace of this World Cup.

Brian: As a footnote, my producer tells me The Cosmos, who we refer to as a team from the past were revived in a minor league division. They played at various small stadiums, Hofstra, Mitchell Field, Uniondale at MCU Park, and Coney Island where the Cyclones play, but they've been on hiatus. I think in some financial trouble since the pandemic writes a member of my team, so with an Asterisk on The Cosmos. Dan Friedman's opinion essay titled Why I'm Boycotting The World Cup in Qatar and So Should You is in Howard Magazine, an online magazine that features stories about soccer. Thank you so much for joining us and prompting this conversation and all our callers' thoughts.

Dan: Thanks so much, Brian.

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