re: Another reason to loathe soccer

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According to a recent investigation by The Guardian, since 2012, nearly 900 immigrant workers from India and Nepal have died from circumstances largely related to 2022 World Cup labor. If present conditions persist, up to 4,000 more may die “before a ball is kicked in 2022,” according to the International Trade Union Confederation, which monitors workers’ rights across the globe. As of last fall, more than half of the dead had succumbed to workplace accidents or heart attacks triggered by the heat of the desert, coupled with squalid living quarters that often drive laborers to sleep on their roofs. One laborer told The Guardian he was physically assaulted by his employer after being forced to work for more than 36 hours on no food. This in a country so oil rich it’s spending $200 billion on a sports event. That’s $100,00 per capita, versus the $350 per capita lavished on the pricey Sochi Olympic Games, $73 per capita estimated for Brazil’s World Cup, and $54 per capita spent by South Africa when it hosted the tournament (not counting Qatar’s likely hidden costs, in the form of alleged bribes to win the bid in the first place.) “The overall picture is of one of the richest nations exploiting one of the poorest to get ready for the world's most popular sporting tournament,” The Guardian report concludes

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