Gianni Infantino said he feels gay. That feels like a woman. That he feels like a migrant worker. He lectured Europeans to criticize Qatar’s human rights record and defended the host country’s last-minute decision to ban beer from World Cup stadiums.
The FIFA president delivered an hour-long rant on the eve of the World Cup’s opening game, then spent about 45 minutes answering questions from the media about the actions of the Qatari government and a wide range of other issues .
“Today I feel Qatari,” Infantino said at the start of his first World Cup press conference on Saturday. “Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel like a migrant worker.”
Infantino later fired back at a reporter who noted that he left women out of his unusual statement.
“I feel like a woman,” replied the FIFA president.
Continuous criticism
Qatar has faced a litany of criticism since 2010, when it was chosen by FIFA to host the world’s biggest soccer tournament.
LOOK | Human rights concerns persist in Qatar:
The Qatar World Cup is facing intense scrutiny over human rights concerns
As Qatar prepares to host the men’s soccer World Cup in a month’s time, concerns about human rights in the conservative Muslim country persist. Global Affairs warns Canadians traveling to Qatar that LGBTQ2 travelers could face discrimination or even arrest.
Migrant workers who built Qatar’s World Cup stadiums often worked long hours in harsh conditions and were subjected to discrimination, wage theft and other abuses as their employers shirked responsibility, the London-based human rights group Equidem in a 75-page report published this month.
Infantino defended the country’s immigration policy and praised the government for bringing migrants to work.
“We in Europe close our borders and we don’t allow virtually any workers from these countries, who earn obviously very low incomes, to work legally in our countries,” Infantino said. “If Europe really cared about the fate of these people, these young people, then Europe could also do what Qatar did.
“But give them some work. Give them some future. Give them some hope. But this one-sided moral lesson is just hypocrisy.”
Reforms done, concerns persist
Qatar is ruled by a hereditary emir who has absolute say over all government decisions and follows an ultra-conservative form of Islam known as Wahhabism. In recent years, Qatar has transformed itself following the natural gas boom of the 1990s, but has faced domestic pressure to stay true to its Islamic heritage and Bedouin roots.
An Argentina fan takes a photo of a banner on Saturday as the fan zone opens ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Doha, Qatar. (Peter David Josek/The Associated Press)
Under intense international scrutiny, Qatar has enacted a series of labor reforms in recent years that have been praised by Equidem and other rights groups. But advocates say abuses are still widespread and workers have few avenues for redress.
Infantino, however, continued to hit on the Qatari government’s talking points of returning criticism to the West.
“What we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years, we should apologize for the next 3,000 years before we start lecturing people,” said Infantino, who moved from Switzerland last year to live in Doha before the World Cup.
Human rights are not a ‘culture war’
In response to his comments, human rights group Amnesty International said Infantino is “brushing aside legitimate human rights criticism” by dismissing the price migrant workers have paid to make the tournament possible and FIFA’s accountability .
A fan is seen sitting on furniture ready to watch the upcoming World Cup soccer matches hosted by Qatar. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)
“Demands for equality, dignity and compensation cannot be treated as some kind of culture war – they are universal human rights which FIFA has committed to respect in its own statutes,” said Steve Cockburn, head of economic justice and social of Amnesty.
A televised speech by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on October 25 marked a turning point in the country’s approach to any criticism, as he claimed that he had been “subjected to an unprecedented campaign that no host country has ever faced.”
Since then, government ministers and World Cup organizing staff have dismissed some European criticism as racism and called for a compensation fund for the families of migrant workers as a publicity stunt.
“We seem to forget”
Qatar has often been criticized for laws that criminalize homosexuality, limit some freedoms for women and do not offer citizenship to migrants.
On a mobile phone you can see an image of Qatar’s Khalifa Stadium, one of the venues for the World Cup. (Jam Sta Rosa/AFP/Getty Images)
“How many gay people were prosecuted in Europe?” Infantino said, echoing earlier comments that European countries had similar laws until recent generations. “Sorry, it was a process. We seem to forget.”
In one region of Switzerland, women only had the right to vote in the 1990s, she said.
He also criticized European and American countries that he said did not open their borders to welcome the girls and women soccer players that FIFA and Qatar worked to help leave Afghanistan last year .
Albania was the only country to increase, he said.
Seven of Europe’s 13 teams at the World Cup said their captains will wear an anti-discrimination armband at matches in defiance of a FIFA rule, taking part in a Dutch campaign called “One Love”.
FIFA has refused to comment publicly on this issue in a meaningful way, or on the request by European football federations for FIFA to support a compensation fund for the families of migrant workers.