Qatar is "Celebrating Change" in Bid for Olympics

This post is categorized under "minority rights," but in the case of Qatar it's a misnomer. The 20% minority of the people living in Qatar who are actually citizens enjoy some rights. It's the 80% disenfranchised majority  of "foreign" workers that lack any guaranteed rights. This bizarre inversion (similar to the UAE's and Kuwait's) comes to the fore as Qatar bids to host the Olympics:

You could learn as much about Qatar and its Olympic pretensions from the [Doha Games] gold-medal match between India (35) and Pakistan (23) as you could about kabaddi itself. Although some 750,000 people live in Qatar--a peninsula-state about the size of New Jersey jutting into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia--only 170,000 are its citizens. The balance are Indians (the majority)--numbering more than 200,000--Pakistanis, Filipinos, Iranians, Bangladeshis and a host of other groups who come to Qatar in search of work and sometimes end up staying the rest of their lives. As at most events, very few Qataris were seen at the kabaddi hall, whose seats were filled mainly by the immigrants who do the work that keeps Qatar running...

The Doha Games were executed almost flawlessly...  But a catering company from England fed the Athletes' and Media Villages, a Dutch company ran the lnfo2006 system and Asian Games News Service, foreigners handled the accreditation, did the announcing at the competitions, and managed and operated the transportation system. Foreigners ran the Athletes' and Media Villages, as well as the scoreboards, the media centers, and the TV camerawork. Foreign janitors did the cleanup. And the 16,000 volunteers who complemented the paid staff were drawn overwhelmingly from Qatar's immigrant communities. Seven hundred Australians put together the Opening Ceremony program; even the horse at the Opening Ceremony was trained in Australia. Only in the security detail was there any identifiable Qatari presence. A simple "Keif halaq" ("How are you?") addressed in Arabic to a Doha Asian Games worker almost always brought a blank response. The Opening and Closing Ceremonies aside, there was little of the flavor of Arabia at the Doha Games. Qatar simply gave the go-ahead and wrote the checks.

On balance, hosting the 2016 Olympics would be a tremendous boon for Qatar, well satisfying Doha 2016's bid slogan: "Celebrating change." At the extreme, it might force Qatar to deliberate whether a country whose citizens are a 20% minority can be viable.

Comments

[Harry]

Interesting.
No Jewish athletes, no unbelievers, no woman's competions.
I think the host nation is allowed to introduce a new event. What do they have in mind? Longest bomb toss/most killed/injured per throw? Longest distance run before explosion and martyrdom?
The possibilites are endless!

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It's sad but it's a truth.

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My journey to and from work goes through the Olympic site so I am going to have to put up with even more overcrowded Tube trains for the

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What of everyone else? Moreover, simply because that one person had the money to buy that land does not mean that he 'deserves' it.

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Apologies for the negativity, its just average folk like me simply don't see the point.

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Monty Panesar has :-Colour,Flare and Talent which has got to be good for the game.. Come on Monty once again...do your stuff.

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The only hindrance we face as Africans is lack of penetrating to the outside countries in terms of export.

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There is no real scholarship going on, only propaganda dressed as fiction.

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Being children my Sister and I were both very keen to see it built.... and most importantly visit.

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All of the milestones and media coverage will set the stage.

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Ha ha, write this text is to shake out of childhood those events. Even with the childhood memorial it

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Or maybe they'll request Everyday is Like Sunday: "Come, come, nuclear bomb..."