Manjur Kha Pathan, 40, worked 12 to 13 hours a day as a truck driver. He had complained that the air conditioning in his cabin was faulty. Manjur collapsed at his accommodation on 9 February 2021, and died before the ambulance arrived.

Tul Bahadur Gharti, 34, worked in construction. He died in his sleep on 28 May 2020, after working around ten hours in temperatures that had reached 39°C.

Amnesty investigated the deaths of six migrant workers in detail – four construction workers, one security guard and one truck driver. None of the men had any known underlying health conditions, and all had passed mandatory medical tests before traveling to Qatar. None of their families have received compensation.

The fact that a high number of deaths are categorized as ‘cardiovascular diseases’ in Qatar’s statistics may be obscuring a high number of deaths that are, in reality, unexplained. This is also indicated by deaths data from South Asian countries, where a large majority of migrant workers come from.

For example, Bangladeshi government records show that 71% of deaths of Bangladeshi nationals in Qatar between November 2016 and October 2020 were attributed by Qatari authorities to “natural causes.”

Amnesty’s analysis of deaths data from multiple sources indicates that migrant worker deaths are going unexplained on a large scale. Official Qatari statistics show that over 15,021 non-Qataris – of all ages and occupations – died between 2010 and 2019, but data on cause of death is unreliable, due to the lack of investigations which Amnesty documented.

Nick McGeehan, a director at FairSquare Projects, an advocacy group specialising in labour rights in the Gulf. “A very significant proportion of the migrant workers who have died since 2011 were only in the country because Qatar won the right to host the World Cup,” he said.

Ghal Singh Rai from Nepal paid nearly £1,000 in recruitment fees for his job as a cleaner in a camp for workers building the Education City World Cup stadium. Within a week of arriving, he killed himself.

Qatar’s grim death toll is revealed in long spreadsheets of official data listing the causes of death: multiple blunt injuries due to a fall from height; asphyxia due to hanging; undetermined cause of death due to decomposition.

A report from Qatar government’s own lawyers in 2014 recommended that it commission a study into the deaths of migrant workers from cardiac arrest, and amend the law to “allow for autopsies … in all cases of unexpected or sudden death”. The government has done neither.

Qatar continues to “drag its feet on this critical and urgent issue in apparent disregard for workers’ lives”, said Hiba Zayadin, Gulf researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Yossarian wrote:

The irony of the Qatar situation is that before they were awarded the World Cup, I knew nothing about the place. Now all I know is that it’s run by vicious cunts. This has been about the opposite of sportswashing for me.

Same with Saudi for me. I knew about the Kashoggi murder and that was it. Now there's a spotlight on their bullshit. Still doesn't stop the cunts

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MyNamesKrisG wrote:

Anyway glad you are all aware of this, but it's all okay, "cos China"

Nobody has said that

I just wanted to point out that I have a serious issue with China's treatment of the Uyghurs and perhaps we could include other massive injustices in this discussion.  I mean there are a LOT of them.