Articles printed in The Eye are written by a staff of contributors and edited by the multi-award successful former BBC information and present affairs reporter, Phil Parry.
Celebrations after Wales certified for the World Cup finals in Qatar, have put centre stage enormous controversies affecting the host nation, together with allegations it provided lots of of thousands and thousands of kilos to draw the event within the first place, and that homosexuality there’s unlawful.
The mainstream media in Wales, nevertheless, have largely targeting the ‘triumph’ of incomes a spot.
The Cardiff-based, South Wales Echo (SWE), for instance, splashed on its entrance web page with the headline: “PAINT THE TOWN RED!” (in color), and gave readers an eight-page ‘WE’RE OFF TO QATAR‘ FANS PICTURE SPECIAL.
BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW) merely reported: “Head of Welsh soccer Noel Mooney stated the staff would use the occasion as a ‘platform’ to debate human rights in Qatar, the place homosexuality is against the law”.
The web site WalesOnline faithfully reported as a POLITICAL story, the issues of these in cost, with the First Minister of Wales (FMW), Mark Drakeford, saying: “We’re completely delighted that Wales might be represented at Qatar, however we must always not look the opposite manner from the reservations that we’d have as a nation from a few of these human rights points that we see there”.
A noble, solitary, exception was a little-watched, Welsh-language information merchandise, which highlighted Qatar’s appalling homosexual and girls’s rights data in particular phrases.
But the nation’s profitable bid to stage the competitors has itself made disturbing headlines, in UK NEWSPAPERS.
The Sunday Instances revealed that the tiny desert state had secretly offered £400 million to the world soccer governing physique, FIFA, simply 21 days earlier than the worrying choice was introduced to carry this 12 months’s contest there.
However it’s human rights in Qatar, which have come below notably shut scrutiny.
Homosexuality is against the law there, with a punishment of as much as three years in jail, and it carries the opportunity of the dying penalty for Muslims below sharia legislation.
There are additionally prevailing cultural mores which view homosexuality, and cross-dressing, negatively.
It’s been reported that plenty of Wales soccer followers have pledged to boycott Qatar regardless of their pleasure on the Welsh staff qualifying for a World Cup for the primary time in 64 years.
The Qatar authorities doesn’t recognise same-sex marriage or civil partnerships, nor does it enable folks in Qatar to marketing campaign for Lesbian, Homosexual, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights.
The tutorial and author Laura McAllister tweeted (with a hyperlink to her article within the Western Mail [WM]) that there was “…no time to waste if we’re (Wales is) to make sure sustainable advantages from (Hashtag) Qatar 2022“.
That is highly-ironic as she is homosexual herself, and Professor McAllister (together with her companion) has adopted a toddler, which might, in fact, be legally proscribed within the nation internet hosting a contest that she exhorts Wales “to make sure sustainable advantages from”.
She could also be notably enthusiastic about the truth that, earlier this 12 months, below the headline ‘DOCTOR BECOMES ‘FIRST’ QATARI TO PUBLICLY COME OUT AS GAY’ The Unbiased reported that Nas Mohammed stated: ““I walked right into a homosexual membership and I knew I used to be 100 per cent homosexual. I went residence and cried – I assumed my life is in disaster. I assumed I used to be going to go to hell, my life is damned”.
One main Welsh soccer broadcaster, instructed us: “My producer is homosexual and he can’t go!”
Different points about Qatar are additionally a supply of concern. The nation has been the topic of a warning from the UK Authorities to travellers going there, and it holds pariah standing amongst many different nations.
The UK Authorities instructed potential travellers to the nation they confronted main dangers, and it said on its recommendation web site: “Terrorists are more likely to attempt to perform assaults in Qatar“.
In the meantime, Saudi Arabia is one among a number of nations around the globe which has reduce off diplomatic relations with Qatar.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, severed relations with Qatar on June 5 2017.
Additionally they gave Qatari residents 14 days to go away their territory and banned their very own residents from travelling to, or residing in, Qatar.
The emirate had refused to adjust to an preliminary listing of 13 calls for, saying it will not conform to any measures that threatened its sovereignty or violated worldwide legislation. But it surely was instructed by its neighbours that they needed it to simply accept six broad rules on combating extremism and terrorism.
The opposite headline-grabbing challenge has been Qatar’s relationhip with Iran, with which it shares the world’s largest gasoline discipline.
The state has additionally alarmed its neighbours with its connections to worrying extremist teams. Qatar acknowledges that it has offered help to a few of them, such because the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), however denies aiding militant teams linked to al-Qaeda or so-called Islamic State (IS).
Information that the state airline, Qatar Airways (QA) was coming to Cardiff Airport (CA) (the service has now been ‘postponed’), has raised eyebrows too.
The flight to Qatar’s capital Doha from CA was hugely-praised within the mainstream media (as with the qualification by Wales for the World Cup there), even supposing the troubled desert emirate had (even then) usually hit the headlines.
The airport’s Chief Business Officer Spencer Birns said baldly: “Qatar Airways (QA) are dedicated to the route (with Doha) and we would like them to achieve success”. Mr Birns seemed to be optimistic, not merely in regards to the link-up with a state airline, the place the nation guidelines homosexuality unlawful, however the prospects for his airport typically, regardless that latest figures had been lower than encouraging.
He instructed a committee on the Welsh Parliament/Senedd Cymru (WP/SC): “There was extra visitors dealing with at different airports than there was at Cardiff, however then don’t neglect we’ve been able in Wales the place, and fairly rightly so, the federal government have been so closely targeted on the well being of the nation, that really encouraging folks to not journey abroad has been a significant factor within the Welsh authorities’s strategy”.
Extraordinary statements like these got here as figures confirmed that simply 6,077 passengers had used his airport in a single month throughout the pandemic, though this was considered as a ‘success’ by CA (from which, presumably, many Welsh soccer followers would possibly fly) as effectively, as a result of it represented a giant improve on the earlier 12 months.
They had been additionally set in opposition to different exceptional feedback. The Chairman of CA on the time, Roger Lewis described as “transformational” the affiliation with an airline from a state with such a doubtful file on civil liberties, and which has been accused, now, of providing monumental funds earlier than being given the World Cup to host.
The flight to Qatar’s Hamed Worldwide Airport was described positively in the SWE as offering “capability for 150,000 passengers a 12 months, in addition to vital freight capability for Welsh exporters at round 10 tonnes a flight”.
In April 2017 BBC Wales’s Economics Correspondent Sarah Dickins stated approvingly: “The brand new direct route from Cardiff to Doha is a reminder not simply that the economic system of Qatar is rising considerably but in addition that commerce between Wales, the Arab world and past is growing”.
When the primary flight from Doha was due, WalesOnline simply reported the glowing phrases of Mr Lewis when he stated: “This can be a pivotal second for Cardiff Airport, for Wales and the South West of England. The far reaching penalties of this service for passengers and companies might be transformational”.
The identical praising phrase was utilized by the current Chief Govt of CA Deb Bowen Rees who instructed the SWE: “The Qatar Airways service has been transformational…”
In interviews, the First Minister of Wales on the time, Carwyn Jones said: “We want to work along with his excellency (Akbar Al Baker the Chief Govt of QA)“. He tweeted that he “welcomed” the primary QA flight into CA and stated it represented a “enormous increase” for Wales.
The then Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns knowledgeable us: “The brand new flight from Cardiff to Doha (Qatar’s capital) plugs our entrepreneurs straight into probably the most dynamic economies within the Center East, and an airport which presents an additional 150 international locations”.
As with qualifying for the World Cup, the mainstream media’s response to the announcement of the brand new Qatar route was exceptional, and have become a goal of our satirical author Edwin Phillips. However disturbing headlines have lengthy swirled round Qatar’s actvities.
Other than the World Cup, Qatar hosted, too, the ousted ruler of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, who was convicted of corruption in a Sudanese court docket, however appears unlikely to be extradited to face trial for overseeing genocide in Darfur.
It additionally saved silent as lots of of hundreds of Algerians protested, chanting “the folks need the regime to go”.
A whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in ‘assist’ cash has additionally been given by Qatar to Hamas, the group which holds sway within the Gaza Strip, and which has been designated by the USA as a terrorist organisation.
Wales is just not alone, nevertheless, the place issues have been raised.
In England union activists have shaped a coalition with teams equivalent to Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and FairSquare, to submit a letter of protest to the Soccer Affiliation (FA), about Qatar’s remedy of migrant employees used throughout the development of soccer stadiums there.
Protests like these are unlikely, although, to fret a rustic which it’s alleged put up lots of of thousands and thousands of kilos earlier than getting a world soccer event, and the place homosexuality has been dominated unlawful.
However not less than Wales has certified!
The reminiscences of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry’s, astonishing 38 12 months award-winning profession in journalism (together with the true information behind sport headlines) as he was gripped by the uncommon neurological disabling situation, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been launched in a serious e book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the e book now!
Regrettably publication of one other e book, nevertheless, was refused, as a result of it was to have included names.
