Qatari authorities are ignoring international law by failing to inform embassies when their citizens are arrested, detained, or are pending trial for a death sentence.
Our new data reveals that between 2016 and 2021 at least 21 people were under sentence of death in Qatar. Of the 21, only three cases involved Qatari nationals and only one involved a woman (who was accused of murder). The remaining 18 were made up of foreign nationals: Seven from India, two from Nepal, five from Bangladesh, one Tunisian, and three Asians of unknown nationality.
In December 2017, male Nepalese migrant worker Anil Chaudhary was sentenced to death for murdering a Qatari. He was executed by firing squad in May 2020 bringing an end to a 20-year hiatus on the death penalty in Qatar. We have learned that Chaudhary's embassy was only notified of his scheduled execution the day before, leaving them inadequate time to provide meaningful support at this final stage of the judicial process.
As Qatar moves into the spotlight as the host of the FIFA World Cup, so too, should its human rights record. Chaudhary is just one of an invisible migrant workforce who are deemed unworthy of due process. The vulnerability of a foreign national arrested abroad is recognized in international law with the UN's Vienna Convention on Consular Relations 1963. Qatar acceded to this convention in 1998.
But our research has found that the Qatari authorities do not honour this agreement in practice. Migrant workers found guilty of crimes without having access to lawyers who speak their own language and executed without appropriate post-conviction review processes or assistance.
Our new evidence also shows that the capital crimes for which migrant workers are convicted across the Gulf region as a whole are inextricably connected to their precarious migratory and economic situations. Damning evidence has emerged about the abuse of migrant workers, particularly those working on the World Cup infrastructure, who have died because of extreme working and living conditions.
The case of Chaudhary is one such example. We know he travelled to Qatar in 2015 to work as a labourer in a car washing firm. He was from the village of Aurahi in the Mahottari district of Nepal, a region with the second-largest source of migrant labour in the country, characterized by some as a place “where the streets have no men”, a consequence of many unskilled migrants travelling to Gulf states.
Our research suggests that, even when notified, some embassies may not be forthcoming in assisting their nationals who are facing criminal charges. Embassies may be reluctant to assist or devote funds to supporting those people because, as Pramod Acharya, an investigative journalist from Nepal, explained to us, they “don't want to give the impression that they are protecting criminals”.
Other NGOs told us that the embassies argue they are understaffed and underfunded as well as poorly coordinated. Deepika Thapaliya, of Equidem, explained that the effectiveness of diplomatic interventions on behalf of the foreign national depended on the “bargaining power” of the foreign government, which many South Asian states do not have in the Gulf because they are so reliant on remittances.
It is thought that this is because of foreign states' interest in maintaining their economic relationships with Gulf countries and that “the remittances sent home by hundreds of thousands of such workers every month may be more important for the country than the protection of an individual citizen at risk of burdening the relations with the host country.”
Under Qatari law, only Qatari lawyers can represent defendants, and thus foreign defendants are not able to hire a lawyer from their own country, who would know their language and be better acquainted with their situation. In Chaudhary's case, the Nepali Embassy in Doha found this rule to be a major barrier to ensuring he was well-represented, as it was difficult to find a Qatari lawyer who was ready to defend a foreigner accused of killing a Qatari national. After repeated requests from the embassy, a lawyer was found, but only after his sentence had been pronounced, making it much more difficult for any conviction to be overturned at appeal.
Amnesty International coined the term “sportswashing” -- referred to as states hosting high-profile sports events to try to obscure their poor human rights records. Examples of this include Brazil hosting the football World Cup in 2014 and Russia hosting the same in 2018. Amnesty International launched campaigns in light of these events and has done so for the Qatar World Cup too.
As the kick off to the World Cup approached, there were reports of workers being sacked after a circular was issued by the Qatari government urging companies to reduce the number of migrant workers in the country before the games started. In recent months, workers have been sent home in large numbers without being paid, with activists concerned this is to erase their presence before the world's media and spectators arrive. Some of those who protested the withholding of their salaries were arrested and deported, in pursuance of an order to police.
As Acharya discovered: “These workers are very unhappy that they worked a lot, they worked hard to make this tournament possible. But just a couple of months back, they were sent home and not in a good manner. They [the Qatari authorities] behaved like they were criminals and they were sent home.”
Fifa has maintained that it “is not aware of any policy at the host country” mandating workers to leave Qatar ahead of the World Cup and that it is “in touch with our counterparts” in Qatar and the ILO to “look into specific cases where companies may have terminated contracts in an improper manner.” Fifa says progress is being made on workers' rights and labour conditions in the country and that there also compensation mechanisms in place.
The current competition has produced heated discussions in football about potential boycotts owing to Qatar's poor human rights record. Others are calling for something visible at the tournament itself. Acharya argues that people in Nepal are waiting for some recognition of the sacrifice that so many of their friends and families have made. They say “we could not get their lives back, but it would be good if they could recognize or honour the contribution of those workers”.
Arguably, protest action should also focus on this invisible death row population of migrant workers, many of whom are victims of trafficking, labour abuse, torture in detention and ultimately, for some, wrongful conviction.
Jocelyn Hutton is Research Officer, Death Penalty Research Unit, University of Oxford. Carolyn Hoyle is Director of the University of Oxford Death Penalty Research Unit, Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. Lucy Harry is Post-Doctoral Researcher, Death Penalty Research Unit (DPRU), University of Oxford. A version of this article previously appeared in The Conversation UK and has been reprinted under special arrangement.