随着世界杯比赛的进行，人权活动人士和其他人一直在抗议比赛和卡塔尔官员，他们认为这是过去几个月来一直在现场的数百名工人的人权问题。
据一些活动人士称，从建筑工人到酒店员工，每个人据称都被迫在高温下长时间工作，工资很低，在某些情况下还受到微妙的威胁。
格兰特·沃尔(Grant Wahl)是一名长期的体育记者，他为包括《体育画报》(Sports Illustrated)在内的多家媒体报道过足球，他调查了其中一些指控，并报告说许多工人面临着不公平的条件。
主持播客的沃尔《与格兰特·沃尔的对决》与...交谈"从这里开始"周一讲述了他抵达卡塔尔时的发现。
从这里开始:格兰特，与上周飞往卡塔尔的许多记者不同，你今年早些时候在这些建筑项目中度过了一段时间。你为什么要去看一堆空空的体育馆和酒店?
格兰特·沃尔:我知道我会去世界杯，来这里报道..一旦比赛开始，就把注意力完全集中在足球上。但在此之前，我想做一个故事，做一些关于卡塔尔移民工人的实际报道。卡塔尔近90%的劳动力不是卡塔尔人。他们来自东非、西非、印度次大陆和远东。他们从事建筑工作，在家政和房屋中工作，酒店工作，以及移民工人在卡塔尔从事的各种工作。但是历史上他们的工资并不高。他们待遇不好。很多人已经死了。
非常仔细研究这一问题的人权组织说，卡塔尔人真的不在乎，他们通过试图找出人们死亡的实际原因来表明他们不在乎。绝大多数的死亡只是被归类为自然原因。但是，很明显，卡塔尔全年都很热。
由于高温和身体对高温的反应，很多农民工死亡。
卡塔尔政府在压力下通过了新的法律。它们是在2019年宣布的，卡塔尔政府对此大肆宣传，称我们已经结束了这种“kafala”制度，在这种制度下，雇主可以保留他们的移民工人的护照，并从根本上防止他们离开这个国家，即使他们受到虐待。所以有一个最低工资标准。
无论是在本国还是在卡塔尔，工人都不再被允许支付招聘费用前往卡塔尔并在那里找到工作。这些新法律公布后，工人首次被允许在卡塔尔境内选择更换工作，而不必离开该国再回来。
而是我在地面上做的事情。我决定去14家国际足联酒店，我将在每家国际足联酒店与至少一名工作人员交谈，让他们匿名，并真正了解他们的经历，以及这些法律在卡塔尔是否得到了遵守。
当我与越来越多的员工交谈时，一种模式很快出现了，我在所有这14家不同的国际足联酒店中与近24人交谈过，这就是，这些新法律中有许多没有得到遵守。我采访过的一些工人没有护照。
从这里开始:他们拿着你的护照，好像在说‘按照我们告诉你的去做，否则你就别想回家’?这是暗示吗?
沃尔:正确。如果没有护照，你实际上是不能离开这个国家的，所以这里面有一点自由的成分。
一些人，包括美国队在卡塔尔下榻的酒店的人，告诉我他们必须支付大笔招募费用才能来到这个国家，这让他们从到达那里的那一刻起就负债累累。有一件事似乎确实受到了关注，那就是新的最低工资，我认为这很有趣。但请记住，新的最低工资约为每小时1.25美元。
从这里开始:但接下来的问题是…每个参与者的责任是什么?事实上，美国前几天与一些移民工人举行了一场友好的比赛，几乎是在说“我们看到你了，伙计们”，但我们回家后又会怎么样呢?我看到人们在考虑是否要抵制这些游戏。你认为人们会把他们在新闻中听到的问题和他们在屏幕上喜欢的游戏联系起来吗?
沃尔:本届世界杯的美国英语广播公司是福克斯体育，他们公开表示，我们不会报道任何所谓的争议性问题，如卡塔尔的移民工人状况、LGBTQ权利或妇女权利，顺便提一下，这些都是美国足球正在教育球员并花时间研究的问题，许多其他新闻媒体也在讨论这些问题。所以福克斯决定不仅仅是为了这次世界杯，而是在2018年俄罗斯世界杯之前，他们不会碰这个。这肯定是他们做出的决定。
如果美国的球迷决定抵制世界杯，不看比赛，我能理解。
World Cup workers face alleged unfair working conditions despite Qatar promises
As the World Cup matches are underway, human rights activists and others have been protesting the games and Qatar officials over what they say are human rights issues for the hundreds of workers who have been on the ground for the last couple of months.
According to some activists, everyone from construction workers to hotel employees has been allegedly forced to work long hours in the heat with little pay and, in some cases, subtle threats.
Grant Wahl, a longtime sports journalist who has covered soccer for various outlets, including "Sports Illustrated," investigated some of these allegations and reported that many workers face unfair conditions.
Wahl, who hosts the podcast"Fútbol with Grant Wahl,"spoke with"Start Here"Monday about what he found when he arrived in Qatar.
START HERE: Grant, unlike a lot of journalists who flew to Qatar last week, you spent time there earlier this year amid these construction projects. Why were you going to look at a bunch of empty stadiums and hotels?
GRANT WAHL: I knew I was going to go to the World Cup, come here and cover.. focusing entirely on the soccer once the tournament started. But before that, I wanted to do a story and do some actual reporting on the topic of migrant workers in Qatar. Nearly 90% of the workforce in Qatar is not Qatari. They're coming from East Africa, West Africa, the Indian subcontinent [and] the Far East. And they're taking on jobs of construction, working in domestic situations and houses, hotel workers [and] all sorts of things that migrant workers are doing in Qatar. But the history is that they're not paid well. They're not treated well. A lot of people have died.
Human rights organizations who study this stuff very closely say that the Qataris really don't care, and they've shown they don't care by [not] trying to find out actual reasons people have died. The vast majority of deaths are just classified as natural causes. But, obviously, there's a tremendous amount of heat in Qatar year-round.
There are a lot of deaths of migrant workers that have taken place due to the heat and the body's responses to that.
New laws have been passed by the Qatari government under pressure. They were announced in 2019 and the Qatari government made a lot of fanfare about it, saying we have ended this ‘kafala’ system in which employers are allowed to keep the passports of their migrant workers and essentially preventing them from leaving the country, even if they're being treated badly. So there was a minimum wage established.
It was no longer allowed for workers to pay recruitment fees, either in their country or in Qatar to get to Qatar and get a job there. After these new laws were announced, workers were allowed for the first time to choose to change jobs within Qatar without having to leave the country and come back.
But what I was doing on the ground; I decided I was going to go to 14 FIFA hotels, and I was going to speak to at least one worker at each FIFA hotel and give them anonymity, and really find out what their experience has been like and whether these laws have been followed on the ground in Qatar.
A pattern quickly emerged as I talked to more and more workers, and I talked to nearly two dozen at all of these 14 different FIFA hotels, which is that a lot of these new laws are not being followed. Some of the workers that I spoke to didn't have their passports.
START HERE: They hold on to your passport as if to be like 'follow what we're telling you to do or else you don't get home'? Is that the implication there?
WAHL: Correct. You literally cannot leave the country if you don't have your passport, and so there's an element of freedom attached to that.
A bunch, including someone at the hotel where the U.S. team is staying in Qatar, told me that they had to pay big recruitment fees to come to the country, which puts them in debt from the moment they get there. One thing that did appear to be being followed was the new minimum wage, which I thought was interesting. But keep in mind, the new minimum wage is about $1.25 an hour.
START HERE: But the question then is…what is the responsibility of everyone who’s participating? The U.S. actually held a nice friendly game with some migrant workers the other day almost to say “we see you, folks,” but what about all of us back home? I’ve seen people contemplating whether to boycott these games. Do you think people will connect the dots with, between these issues they hear about in the news and the game they love on their screen?
WAHL: So the U.S. English language broadcaster of this World Cup is Fox Sports and they have said publicly we are not going to cover any of these so-called controversial issues like the migrant worker situation in Qatar or LGBTQ rights or women's rights, which are all things that U.S. soccer, by the way, is educating its players on and taking time to look into and a lot of other journalistic outlets are discussing. And so Fox has decided not just for this World Cup, but previously when the World Cup was in Russia in 2018, that they were not going to touch this. And that's certainly a decision they've made.
Activists from "Carton rouge pour le Qatar" (Red card for the Qatar) stage a demonstration to protest against the FIFA World Cup Qatar, at the Place de la Republique in Paris, Nov. 20, 2022.
Benoit Tessier/Reuters
If people, fans, in the U.S. decide they want to boycott the World Cup and not watch it, I understand that.
