Paris Joins Other Cities in Boycotting World Cup to Protest Human and Environmental Abuses in Qatar

Paris has joined several other French cities in announcing they will not broadcast matches of the World Cup in protest at human rights and environmental abuse in Qatar.

Source: FRANCE 24 English/YouTube

Paris, along with numerous other French cities, has decided not to show the World Cup matches in public places or set up “fan zones” to protest the horrific human rights and environmental abuses in the host nation, Qatar.

Marseille, Lille, Bordeaux, Reims, Nancy, Rodez, and the capital have announced the boycott of the World Cup. Local authorities in these areas will not install giant TV screens for the World Cup as they have in the past.

Strasbourg’s mayor, Jeanne Barseghian, told 20 Minutes, “It is impossible for us not to listen to the numerous alerts from NGOs denouncing the abuse and exploitation of immigrant workers. Thousands of foreign workers have died on the building sites, it’s unbearable,” the city’s ecologist mayor, Jeanne Barseghian, told 20 Minutes.

There have been reports of forced labor and deaths of migrant workers at World Cup sites in Qatar. Since Qatar was awarded the right to host the World Cup, the exploitation and abuse of these migrant workers have been rampant. They are exposed to forced labor, unpaid wages, and excessive working hours.

Two million migrant workers have made the 2022 World Cup possible in Qatar. Men and women, mostly from Africa and Asia, have built the stadiums, the roads, and the metro. They also have to provide security for the football matches, transport fans in taxis, greet them in hotels, serve them in restaurants, and more, Amnesty International reported.

Former French footballer Eric Cantona is boycotting the World Cup as well, saying, “I will not watch a single match of this World Cup. This will cost me because since I was a kid it’s been an event that I love, that I look forward to and that I watch with passion. But let’s be honest with ourselves. This World Cup makes no sense. The only meaning of this event, as we all know, is money,” he wrote.

Sign this petition to demand FIFA and its World Cup partners pay reparations to the workers who suffered human rights abuses under Qatar’s exploitative labor system!

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