Controversies over host Qatar's treatment of migrant workers and LGBTQ+ people are dominating discussion of the FIFA World Cup, even after the soccer has kicked off.
Among various campaigns that have taken a stand against Qatar is one by Mojo Supermarket, which has gone for some high profile targets-- the FIFA headquarters and the United Nations.
The campaign started this week at Wembley Stadium with a bold message projected onto FIFA’s office. It read “FIFA - Proud Sponsors of The Slavery Cup.” Simultaneously, projections also appeared on The United Nations building in New York and in Shoreditch, London, calling out FIFA and the UN for allowing Qatar to use slavery to build its World Cup stadiums.
The project also saw the agency distributing thousands of passports across London and New York. In each passport are eleven names, faces and stories of migrant workers who died building the 2022 World Cup stadiums. The passports are symbolic of millions of migrant workers from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and more that came to Qatar for construction jobs but had their passports confiscated and in turn, were enslaved to build the World Cup stadiums in harsh conditions. It is estimated that 15,000 of them died. Many of whom took their own lives.
The campaign can be followed on Instagram by following @TheSlaveryCup and people can also donate at a campaign website, where can they also read stories of some of the workers, to help bring migrant workers back to their homes.
“It’s 2022 and the notion that people can own and control the lives of others is unfathomable," said Mo Said, founder and creative director of Mojo Supermarket, in a statement. "But it’s what happened. And continues to happen. We wanted to not only call out FIFA, Qatar and the United Nations for their responsibility and negligence, but make everyday football fans in London and New York see faces behind these statistics. Because let’s face it. These are brown people that died. And a lot of western countries chalk these death tolls up to things that happen ‘in those countries. The goal of The Slavery Cup is to bring faces and names of these statistics to the western world, and rally people to donate to help those still stuck in Qatar return to their families.
Said continued, revealing a deeply personal connection to the issue: “Many people know that I am Pakistani, but they don’t realize that I was actually born in Dubai. My father was a Pakistani migrant worker in the Gulf, and our family saw first-hand what this system does to people, their physical health and their mental health. The unfortunate reality is that this is going to continue on after the World Cup is over. But now, while the whole world is watching, we need to make sure they never forget.”