The call by Sigrid Kaag of D66 and Gert-Jan Segers of the ChristenUnie to boycott the 2022 World Cup in Qatar goes completely wrong with Valentijn Driessen. The journalist mentions the appeal in his column The Telegraph ‘cheap scoring’ and ‘the Hague reflex’. Driessen does not believe it will have any impact if the Dutch national team does not go to Qatar and believes that the the Dutch should travel to expose abuses.
In Qatar, at least 6,500 labor immigrants have been killed in the construction of the World Cup stadiums in recent years. The Guardian out this week. In response, Kaag and Segers called for a boycott. “It is the Hague reflex”, said Driessen, who thinks that the politicians want to score in election time. “The ChristenUnie and D66 van Segers and Kaag found it unnecessary to propose a boycott of the controversial World Cup allocation to Qatar in 2010.”
Gert-Jan Segers
“Or to advocate a boycott since the publication of the Amnesty International report in 2016 and to advocate it continuously since then. Or propose a trade boycott or introduce trade restrictions or freeze bank accounts. Preferably together with other (European) None of this. Everyone in political The Hague remained on their hands, while such actions really hit Qatar. It would have helped labor immigrants much more in the last ten years and that could really have saved human lives. boycott by the Dutch national team if the calf has already drowned, makes little sense. “
Driessen calls on the KNVB to go. “The blood on the stadium stairs must not have spilled for nothing. the Dutch must go to Qatar and do what the Dutch government does not do: use actions to denounce abuses in this autocratically-run oil state. Be visible and act against poor living conditions. working conditions of migrant workers Against the disadvantaged position of women, against the prosecution of homosexuals and transgender people, against human rights violations, against discrimination and racism The KNVB can assert itself in front of the world with figureheads such as national coach Frank de Boer, his assistant Ruud van Nistelrooy, captain Virgil van Dijk, Georginio Wijnaldum, Frenkie de Jong, Memphis Depay and Matthijs de Ligt. “
“That may, or no should even be expected of the KNVB”, says Driessen. “Sing loose as the KNVB with Oranje. Be visible in the run-up to the World Cup and report abuses in Qatar. That will be more beneficial than a boycott. Let Segers and Kaag go down the road in The Hague to tighten the thumbscrews in Qatar in terms of trade. to combat human rights violations. “
Thijs Zonneveld
Thijs Zonneveld also writes for it in his column Algemeen Dagblad about the call of the politicians. The former cyclist calls it ‘way too easy to put the problem on the plate of the the Dutch players’. “This absurd World Cup has been awarded by a handful of corrupt FIFA bobos and made possible in part by the tacit consent of national unions, sponsors and the international community. Almost all those Dutch politicians who now shout shame have butter on their heads.”
“When Beatrix went to visit the desert in 2011, there was no debate about human rights violations in Qatar,” says Zonneveld. “Not even when trade missions were set up by the Dutch government to secure tenders for stadiums. Royal BAM has been building all kinds of infrastructure projects for years. Countless trade missions to the desert were also organized in recent years: we export. for about half a billion a year to Qatar. In fact, in three weeks there will be a virtual trade mission in Qatar led by (really) Sigrid Kaag. “