Thread by @AsimCP

I'm actually fine with the idea that sports are political. Yes, it should be absolutely appropriate to ask questions about the human rights record of any country you visit, as raised with Russia hosting, and now with Qatar. Be consistent though #WorldcupQatar2022

One of the first points to acknowledge, is the reason why FIFA gives the World Cup to any country in the first place, and much of it is to do with money. There is an addiction to money over any other concern. There is a hypocrisy at play here that needs to be understood.

London (and the UK at large), as one of the centres for dirty money for countries across the world, is used to this type of hypocrisy. It regularly permits investment from sources that are troubling to its own aggrandised self image. Money > than any other consideration.

There is already a great deal of hypocrisy at stake when we talk about the economics of global football and the ways in which it is sustained. Saudi Arabia’s ownership of Newcastle perhaps being the most important recent example.

Not to engage fully in whataboutery, but more to highlight how there are plenty of missed opportunities to speak about important political moments when football is played - it is important to note when it is and isn’t raised.

I hope that countries that visit England to play matches make sure their media cover the extreme class inequalities here, the way that asylum seekers are treated, and the way secret evidence is now regularly used in order to deny suspects adequate access to legal redress.

Since the World Cup in Russia, England have played the following nations, without raising concerns about their human rights records as part of the build up to their games, perhaps they should have thought about doing so. Some examples:

12 October 2018 - England visited Croatia, where journalists are regularly threatened and intimidated by state institutions. Migrants and refugees are also treated appallingly in the country.

15 October 2018 - they could have expressed concern over visiting Spain, a country that regularly uses a brutal police force to crack down on suspects, denying them their rights in a long period of pre-charge detention where they are regularly abused.

15 November 2018 - the USA visited England, there were no public concerns expressed over the extreme levels of violence carried out by the US both domestically and abroad. Media could have used the opportunity to highlight the continued abuses at Guantanamo Bay.

25 March 2019 - England visited Montenegro, a country with a genocidal past, that continues to this day to discriminate against minorities, Muslims in particular. I cannot remember any degree of concern being raised by the English FA or team about human rights violations there.

8 September 2020 - England in Denmark. No mention made of the way that Denmark creates ghettos for minorities and over criminalises those communities. No discussion on the way that migrants in the country are treated and the institutionalised levels of Islamophobia.

3 July 2021 - England in Ukraine. Endemic use of arbitrary detention and torture by state agents in the country constitute a serious violation of international human rights. There is continued concern over the extent of far-right groups the operate in Ukraine.

This year alone, England has played Hungary, Germany and Italy, without raising concerns over their human rights records. None of these countries have their hands clean and so when should ask ourselves why some countries versus others, for what purpose are we doing that?

I return to my first tweet, use platforms to raise concerns, but be consistent. England should boycott ever going to Israel, but if they do, they should highlight the settler colonial violence and architecture of apartheid.

The calls around Qatar seem to ring a little hollow in terms of a lack of consistency of pressing issues in the world. Much of it is performative in light of the movement of global finance and how the countries making performative gestures, benefit from those they are criticising