Originally published at: Reporter in Qatar who gets robbed on live TV is surprised by police response | Boing Boing
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Good on her and holy shit please don’t give Republicans any ideas, it’ll go horribly wrong real fast.
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It’s going to be interesting to see how long Qatar can maintain their oppressive government given that citizens are outnumbered by foreign workers (who have few rights) by more than 7:1. I wonder how much of their police force is made up of foreign workers.
After a certain point I would imagine that a system where a few privileged citizens supervise multiple levels of workers without basic rights could come crashing down rather quickly with little warning. But in the meantime those in charge must be pretty nervous about the people they’re oppressing, not unlike some of the slavers in the US who were worried about uprisings at their plantations and brutally crushed any signs of dissent.
Also, screw those in the West who willingly enable these regimes.
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Week based the final height of the tower on the number of migrant worker deaths reported by the Guardian in 2021. The paper calculated that at least 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka had died in the Qatar between 2010 and 2020.
However, according to football’s governing body FIFA, there have been 37 deaths connected to the construction of the World Cup stadiums.
Every US defense and airplane manufacturer. Start there. Oh, and all those command and control centers where police get their data and video feeds, they don’t build themselves.
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Well, in the US it lasted from 1619 to 1865, and then in another form for another 100 years. So it could go on a while.
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True, but during most of that time, in most parts of the country, the ratio of the enslaved to slaver was never close to 7:1. Just prior to the civil war there were about 4 million slaves and 31 million citizens.
Edit to add: Virginia had the highest proportion of enslaved folks at about 1/3 of their population. Apparently Nottaway County was the highest percentage area within the state at about 74% of the population enslaved.
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Me, I was reminded of the Roman Republic and why they came down so heavily on the Spartacus rebellion. Rome at that time was also slaves outnumbering citizens. Or Sparta needing to keep its troops at home all the time to prevent an uprising of the Helots.
Slavery always, always comes with paranoia, because it is unsustainable and the slave owners know deep down that the revolution is coming, they just hope it hits after they have made good their escape (to the grave).
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IIRC the Qatari police only recruit citizens. A long time ago I read a Twitter thread saying that there could be trouble between the police and foreign football fans, because the police recruit mostly poorer Qataris who don’t have tribal connections that would help them get more lucrative jobs. The Qatari cops, having missed out on the country’s economic boom, would be resentful of foreigners being invited into the country and allowed to break the rules of Qatari society, including by drinking alcohol.
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I wonder if it would help or hurt in the long run if someone tried to speed up the process by sending over a pretty white lady with a trio of dragons.
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Aren’t they needed elswehere?
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It helps in the short tern, but hurts in the long term as change imposed from the outside taints the emancipation with its imperialism. Once the outside agent moves on, the old order often returns with a vengeance, and the society often collapses when they strike back in an attempt to restore the old order.
Bringing this back to Qatar, the situation is wobbly enough as it is, being held in check only by the fact that for all of the nigh slavery, the sad fact is that many of the expatriate workers are still earning better pay than they would have back home. Not to excuse the Qatari, mind, they are still exploiting a bad situation, but the real root of the problem is that of poverty making the situation so ripe for exploitation.
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Or were just promised better pay than that would have made back home. They often have to work a year or more just to pay off the debt that they incur in “recruitment fees.”
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Qatar’s so-called “justice” system is too busy addressing the real thread: rainbow flags and t-shirts.
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I suspect Qatar’s neighbor Saudi Arabia wouldn’t stand idly by. Not that they particularly love the Qataris – rather the opposite, in fact – but the overthrow of the Qatari ruling classes would set an awkward precedent. Besides, intervening to put the underclass back in their place might offer the Saudis the opportunity to restructure the top of the Qatari hierarchy in a manner more congenial to the Kingdom.
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I would spend days trying to think of a punishment that would shame both the thief and the cops.
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I did a brief business trip to Doha a few years back. The place eats your soul. Decided to take a brief walk outside: early July, about 108 degrees F and 95% humidity by 7am. I got about 100m from the hotel entrance and said, ‘nope’ and turned around. Just then I saw a string of minibuses dropping off workers to the construction site next door, each grabbing a shovel as they walked through the gate. I’ve worked in some horrible conditions, but it was nothing to what these guys were having to deal with.
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Machine gun nests in front of hotel lobbies amirite?
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The thing is there is literally no one (with actual power) who wants that sort of change in Qatar.
US has a big military base there, China just signed the longest ever gas deal with them, Saudi is now back and best buddies, Iran and Qatar share interests.
Given the amount that the Qatari government can spend on securing itself, plus the total lack of foreign interest in driving change, I suspect that the status quo will continue.
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Revolutions can happen without foreign intervention too, ya know.
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