FIFA boss Gianni Infantino blasted on Saturday what he called a double standard by “Europeans” for criticizing Qatar’s human rights record and defended the World Cup host’s last-minute decision to ban alcoholic beer from stadiums.
The FIFA president delivered a one-hour conference on the eve of the World Cup’s opening match, and then spent about 45 minutes answering questions from media about the Qatari government’s actions and a wide-range of other topics.
“Today I feel Qatari,” Infantino said Saturday at the start of his first news conference of the World Cup.
“Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.”
Qatar has faced a litany of criticism since 2010, when it was chosen by FIFA to host the biggest football tournament in the world.
Infantino defended the country’s immigration policy, and praised the government for bringing in migrants to work.
“We in Europe, we close our borders and we don’t allow practically any worker from those countries, who earn obviously very low income, to work legally in our countries,” Infantino said.
“If Europe would really care about the destiny of these people, these young people, then Europe could also do as Qatar did.
“But give them some work. Give them some future. Give them some hope. But this moral-lesson giving, one-sided, it is just hypocrisy.”
In recent years, Qatar has been transformed following a natural gas boom in the 1990s, enacting a number of labor reforms in recent years that have been praised by London-based rights group Equidem and other rights groups. But advocates say abuses are still widespread and that workers have few avenues for redress.
Infantino, however, continued to hit the Qatari government’s talking points of turning criticism back onto the West.
“What we Europeans have been doing for the past 3,000 years we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years before we start giving moral lessons to people,” Infantino said to hundreds of international media. AP
