The German national football team protested against FIFA before their match against Japan in Group E of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. In the official photo, before the game, the eleven starting players posed with their hands over their mouths, as a sign of censorship.
Seven European teams planned to wear the colorful “One Love” armband, in favor of inclusion and against discrimination. England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, however, withdrew after football’s governing body announced it would punish captains with a yellow card. The federations criticized Fifa’s inflexibility.
The regulation requires captains to wear “the armbands provided by FIFA” during competition. That’s what captain Manuel Neuer did this Wednesday (23). Otherwise, the referee can ask the player to leave the field to “correct the dress”, and, in case of non-compliance with this instruction, the player can be reprimanded.
Belgium was also banned from wearing a T-shirt with the inscription “Love” (“Love” in English). That shirt, mostly white, but with bits in the different colors of the rainbow.
Faced with the controversy, the Danish Football Federation said it is studying whether to disaffiliate from FIFA.
Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar, and some footballers have raised concerns with fans traveling to the event, particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and women – who human rights groups say are discriminated against under Qatari laws. World Cup host country.
World Cup organizers, however, have repeatedly said that everyone, no matter their sexual orientation or background, is welcome during the tournament.
Less than two weeks before the finals, Khalid Salman, a Qatari World Cup ambassador and former national team player, told German broadcaster ZDF that homosexuality was “mental illness”.
The NGO HRW (Human Rights Watch) denounced that the Qatari police arbitrarily detained and abused members of the LGBTQIA+ community before the World Cup.
A day before the start of the World Cup, FIFA president Gianni Infantino raised his voice in defense of Qatar.
“Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel handicapped. Today I feel like a migrant worker,” he said. “Of course I’m not Qatari, I’m not Arab, I’m not African, I’m not gay, I’m not disabled. But I feel like it because I know what it means to be discriminated against, to be bullied, like a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child, I suffered bullying because he had red hair and freckles and was Italian.”
Infantino even defended Qataris by pointing the finger at historical problems caused by Europe. “Speaking of immigrant workers, we have heard many lessons from Europeans and the Western world. I am European, and I think that for what Europeans have done in the last 3,000 years, we should apologize for the next 3,000 years before giving moral lessons in people.”
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