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Unions: Strip Qatar of World Cup 2022 over abysmal workers' rights

Qatar must be stripped of the 2022 World Cup unless it cleans up its act on workers’ rights, trade unions demanded yesterday.

A sea of red cards, held up by hundreds of union activists, was displayed across the conference hall in a show of anger against the treatment of migrant workers.

Construction union Ucatt’s Neil Vernon said more than 1,000 workers had already been “slaughtered to feed the construction boom” in the tiny emirate.

He derided claims from Balfour Beatty that migrant labourers “enjoyed” being forced to share cramped accommodation because they had a different cultural outlook from British workers.

“I visited those workers in those filthy, miserable conditions, squeezed into tiny rooms. I asked them if they liked it. You know what the answer was? It was No,” he said.

GMB’s Justin Bowden said that a corrupt autocracy, which treats women as second-class citizens and funds terrorism, should be an international pariah — “but in Fifa they found a partner as rotten as them.”

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