The corruption and hypocrisy around the 2022 World Cup in Qatar has been well-documented, with one aspect being celebrities like David Beckham pocketing £150m to work the event and talk about Qatar like it’s the most forward-thinking, tourist-friendly destination on the planet.
One person who’s been calling out FIFA on the whole thing is Dr Nas Mohamed, who happens to be the first openly gay Qatari (with a public profile anyway). The human rights campaigner wrote an open letter to Beckham accusing him of ‘stamping out hope’, and also tagged him in a bunch of Instagram posts with pro-LGBT mantras.
Well I guess David Beckham started to find him a bit annoying because Dr Nas has revealed that he’s now blocked from seeing Becks’s account:
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In his open letter to Beckham, Dr Nas had written:
“You are stamping out hope for the LGBT community in Qatar.
You show up… take money and look the other way. Furthermore, you send a message that there is truly no chance for us to escape our current persecution and live freely.
This whitewashing of the persecution of the LGBT community in Qatar does not just erase the pain of those suffering from it, but also undermines their pleas for asylum when they do escape.
After all, if David Beckham describes Qatar as ‘perfection’, how bad could it really be?”
In fairness to Becks, he might have some young intern handling his social media accounts and so possibly had nothing to do with Dr Nas being blocked. On the other hand, maybe he just couldn’t be arsed with the constant guilt-tripping and so blocked Dr Nas himself. Out of sight, out of mind! Except Dr Nas has now made the fact he was blocked public and will probably find new ways to invade Beckham’s world leading into November.
Obviously Dr Nas is right to point out the hypocrisy and injustice of not only hosting the World Cup in Qatar, but also pretending like it’s a progressive paradise. The only way I can see Beckham or Gary Neville or anyone else arguing their case is to say that it’s these kinds of big global events that could help convince the Qatari regime to slowly but surely take a fairer, more open-minded approach to things like the LGBT community. Aside from that, they could just be honest and say there’s no way they were turning down a multi-million pound pay day. Which is probably the truth. You’re never turning down £150m, even if your name is David Beckham.
For a look at Team USA’s World Cup kits which have their fans (rightly) fuming, click HERE.
