The pressure exerted by Amnesty International on the FFF and the French national team players continues. in a news “Letter to the Blues” published this Friday, the NGO announces that “will support” Denmark, Sunday night, during the Nations League match between Didier Deschamps’ team and Kasper Hjulmand’s team in Copenhagen (8:45 pm).
Amnesty claims not to have received ” no response “ to the mail sent on May 19 to the Blues to ask them “to talk about the issue of the violation of human rights in Qatar”where the next World Cup will take place (November 20-December 18). “You have decided to remain silent […]continues Amnesty, which has not called for a boycott of the World Cup. Deafening silence from your team in the face of the thousands of migrant workers who died on construction sites in Qatar and the thousands of others subjected to forced labor […]. For us, the Danish team is the big favorite to win the commitment challenge. »
Replaced sponsors in Danes training kits
The NGO recalls that “The sponsors of the Danish national team have decided to remove their logos from the players’ training shirts and replace them with a message in favor of respect for human rights in Qatar.” A decision made last november in consultation with two business partners, after the Danes qualified for the World Cup, where they will meet the Blues again, in group D. On April 1, just after the draw in Doha, in a mixed zone, coach Kasper Hjulmand explained that he “it was not comfortable” to be in the emirate, while next door, Noël Le Graët, the head of “3F”, had said to himself “very happy that we come to play in Qatar”.
After several postponements, the FFF and Amnesty France ended up meeting a little less than three weeks after this draw at the organization’s headquarters, in Paris, to discuss issues related to respect for human rights and the protection of the workers of the Little Gulf. state, whose foreign labor represents almost 90% of the population.
According to figures provided by the organizing committee for the Qatar World Cup at the end of last year, there had been 38 deaths since 2014 at construction sites linked to stadiums, of which only “Three specifically related to accidents at work”. Figures that would worry the 35,000 workers who were assigned directly to the tournament venues, while the latter constitute only a fraction of the immigrant workers mobilized in all the infrastructures of the emirate, for ten years.