The Guardian: I was jailed for speaking out about the treatment of workers at the Qatar World Cup. I am still being punished

I was jailed for speaking out about the treatment of workers at the Qatar World Cup. I am still being punished

What I saw in a town called Al-Shahaniyah on the outskirts of Doha, the capital of Qatar, seven years ago broke every rule and human right in the book. Desperate, hard-working people were on strike for not receiving their salaries for two, four or six months. Salaries that rarely exceeded $300 (£220) a month, in one of the richest countries in the world at the time.

They had no food, no drinking water and no money to survive on or send back home to their families. But what made the situation worse was that they were building something for each and every one of us: not a mansion, a private home, or a road in the middle of nowhere. They were building World Cup stadiums for Messi and Ronaldo to play in, and for me and you to enjoy the show.

I was told by my superiors at the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy – the ones tasked with delivering and organising the 2022 Fifa World Cup Qatar – as their media manager, to put a spin on it, bend the truth just a little to match the narrative. In that narrative, we were the good guys, the ones who were changing the landscape for workers in Qatar and the region, setting up new welfare standards that would ensure the workers’ dignity and livelihood for decades to come.

I was asked to issue a statement refuting all claims that the strikers were working on some of the projects for the World Cup. But I didn’t want to choose to protect the story of an amazing tournament delivered by Qatar to the world over and above the rights of workers.

For speaking out, I was charged by a Qatari state security prosecutor with leaking defence secrets, conspiring with foreign countries to destroy the World Cup, among other charges. Eventually, I was convicted of the less serious charge of corruption and put in jail for three-and-a-half years, during which the UN working group issued an opinion rendering my detention arbitrary and my trial unfair.

Fifa chose not to intervene on my case, ignoring it just as they chose to ignore the toll of human lives and human suffering of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, instead declaring it “the best World Cup ever”.

Four years on, with a new World Cup kicking-off this week in Mexico, the US and Canada, I thought I would be free to speak about what happened to workers and me at the Qatar tournament. I was wrong. Two weeks ago, I was stopped at Amman airport in Jordan, my passport was confiscated and was told by intelligence officers to cease any public mention of Qatar 2022, my case, or the workers’ conditions in Qatar immediately, or face the same fate I endured in Qatar: imprisonment.

I had been due to speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum and provide a testimony for a US federal court looking into a case of human trafficking related to the World Cup in Qatar. Instead, I was sitting in an interrogation room and, for a moment, staring straight back into my prison cell of three years in Qatar.

I am Abdullah Ibhais. I am a nobody. I am not politically connected, I hold no office, and I possess neither the wealth nor the power of Fifa or a sovereign state. All I have is my truth that the 2022 Fifa World Cup was built on the blood, sweat and tears of migrant workers.

When Fifa awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, to us Arabs, for the first time, we were ecstatic. The game we grew up with was finally coming home. I had not expected to see those migrant workers suffering. Striking as they were doing that day meant risking imprisonment or deportation without pay. For those people to reach that point, they had to be truly desperate, with absolutely nothing left to lose.

In a few days, the World Cup will be held again. The last one cost me my freedom, and this one has already cost me my passport, my safety, and who knows what is yet to come.

We all want to watch our national teams competing, some of them for the first time, such as my own team, Jordan. So how can we watch this World Cup without struggling between our love for the game and our principles and values

The true story of what happened to workers building the World Cup infrastructure in Qatar must be told and understood by Fifa and everyone, so it will not be repeated. We should tell Fifa now that our love of the game will not blind us from seeing the true cost of the tournament, and that we will no longer accept the cost in the name of the game.