STATES, particularly authoritarian ones, tend to shoot messengers bearing bad news. So it came as no surprise that Hussain Al Mulla, the Qatari deputy labour minister, threatened to sue the Guardian recently.

The newspaper’s crime? Last month, it published an investigative report about the tiny emirate’s treatment of its expatriate labour force, focusing on the fate of Nepalese workers. According to Nepalese embassy records seen by the Guardian, 44 workers had died between June 4 and Aug 8.

Much of the frantic building works going on in Qatar are related to the infrastructure being created for the 2022 World Cup. The world’s most popular sporting event had been awarded to the Arab kingdom among much controversy last year, as fans and players alike asked how the game could be played in temperatures that can reach 50 degrees Celsius in the summer.

No problem, replied the backers of the Qatari bid. We’ll just air-condition all nine stadiums hosting the matches. But even for FIFA, the sport’s governing body, this was an unacceptable solution. When it announced that Qatar’s bid had been accepted, there were barely concealed allegations that many FIFA delegates had been bought.

But FIFA is an opaque organisation, and its long-serving president, Sepp Blatter, has a record of autocratic behaviour. Currently, there is an urgent debate going on over the possibility of shifting the World Cup tournament from the summer to the winter. But this option has many financial and administrative implications. For a start, the football season across Europe is in the autumn and winter, so any change in the World Cup would cause massive rescheduling. The premier league championships in the football world are a bonanza for players, clubs and broadcasters. All of them would demand compensation.

One unspoken aspect of holding this event in Qatar is that the state is officially dry. Fans who intend to travel there to support their teams face the grim prospect of celebrating victories or drowning defeats without gallons of beer. We are all familiar with images of carousing football supporters. Is Qatar ready for an invasion of lager louts who have filled their suitcases with cans of their favourite brew?

As the debate shifts from the exploitation of foreign workers to when the World Cup will be held, FIFA’s decision to award the event to Qatar is coming under increasing scrutiny. Michel Platini, president of UEFA, the players’ association, says that he is more concerned about the treatment of workers than the timing of the Cup.

It has been estimated that if the Qatar authorities do not take immediate steps to halt what observers call virtual slavery, some 4,000 foreign workers will die by the time the World Cup is held. But why are we surprised? After all, this kind of blatant exploitation of foreign workers has been going on across the Arab world for decades.

While male workers face hellish conditions at construction sites and in their baking barracks, female domestic staff is subjected to torture of another kind. Both have to surrender their passports to their sponsors, known as kafeels. This is known as the kafala, or sponsorship system, that effectively binds workers in a master-slave relationship with their employers.

Basically, employees cannot quit without permission as they cannot leave the country without their passports. And if they are caught without papers, they are locked up in jail. This oppressive system is defended on the grounds that it is somehow Islamic. In addition, salaries are withheld to prevent employees from walking out.

Last year, Rizana Nafeek, a young Muslim girl from Sri Lanka, was publicly beheaded in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of killing a small child left in her care by her employers. She insisted that the child had choked on its milk bottle; in any case, Rizana had no experience with babies, and had been hired as a housemaid. Apparently, she had been assaulted and tortured into signing a confession. She was only 17 at the time.

Despite an international outcry, Rizana was beheaded. Her case is one among many. According to a 2010 report prepared by Human Rights Watch, female domestic workers are routinely subjected to rape and torture, and made to work for 15 to 20 hours a day. There are currently 1.5 million female domestic workers in Saudi Arabia alone, and it appears that most of them are at risk of abuse.

The reality is that the treatment of foreign workers in Qatar is not an isolated case: over 25 million workers from Asia and Africa are currently working in the Middle East, and most of them are treated in much the same way as those from Nepal who made the headlines recently.

In the run-up to the World Cup, Qatar expects to recruit another 1.5 million workers from 30 countries. How these poor souls will fare depends on how much pressure FIFA as well as human rights bodies and labour unions can apply. Already, there are calls to move the 2022 World Cup to one of Qatar’s rival bidders.

Blatter has said that there was political pressure on FIFA members from European countries wishing to promote trade ties with Qatar, the world’s richest nation. Whatever the reasons behind the bizarre decision, it has served to put the spotlight on the plight of foreign workers in the Middle East.

At the time of the Rizana Nafeek execution, I had written that while European expat workers were well treated in Arab countries, those from Africa and Asia were subjected to brutal conditions. This differentiation can only be explained by racism driven by oil-derived wealth.

The harsh truth is that whatever Islam might preach about equality, there are many Muslims in the Middle East who believe that their unearned riches have made them God’s chosen people.

irfan.husain@gmail.com