HAMBURG (GERMANY), 4 Nov. (dpa/EP) –
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has sent a letter to the 32 participants in the World Cup in Qatar asking them to focus on the tournament and “not allow football to be dragged into all the ideological or political battles that exist”.
The letter was obtained by the British broadcaster Sky News, and the German Football Federation (DFB) confirmed its existence this Friday to the dpa agency.
In the letter, Infantino said that everyone will be welcome in Qatar “regardless of origin, background, religion, gender, sexual orientation or nationality”, and called on teams to “let football take center stage”.
Sky said the letter did not address a request by eight European countries that their captains be allowed to wear multicolored ‘One Love’ bracelets at the World Cup, a response to concerns about Qatar’s anti-LGBTQ laws.
The country has been widely criticized for its anti-LGBTQ stance, but also for its treatment of foreign workers involved in the construction of World Cup stadiums and for other alleged human rights violations.
After learning of the existence of the letter, Amnesty International (AI) lamented the response offered by FIFA to the problems surrounding the Asian country. “If Gianni Infantino wants the world to ‘focus on football’, there is a simple solution: FIFA could start tackling serious human rights problems instead of sweeping them under the rug,” said the Director of Economic Affairs and Social Amnesty International, Steve Cockburn.
“A first step would be to publicly commit to establishing a fund to compensate migrant workers before the tournament begins and to ensure that LGBT people do not face discrimination or harassment. It is surprising that they have not done so yet,” he added. “Gianni Infantino is right to say that ‘football does not exist in a vacuum’. Hundreds of thousands of workers have been abused to make this tournament possible and their rights cannot be forgotten. They deserve justice and compensation, not empty words, and the time is running out,” he concluded.
