“I didn’t choose the spotlight. They dragged me into it.”
This was among the powerful opening statements made by Abdullah Ibhais during the plenary session about whistleblowing.
The Jordanian national was referring to Qatar’s Supreme Committee, which imprisoned Ibhais on fabricated charges after he refused, in his role as the committee’s media manager, to distort the reality of migrant workers’ suffering in the lead-up to the 2022 World Cup.
For daring to oppose the Qatari regime, Ibhais spent more than three years in prison. And yet, he insists he is not a hero. He once believed in Qatar’s World Cup and wanted to contribute to what he considered to be a “great project.”
That, however, was before he witnessed first-hand the abuse of migrant workers in Qatar, and the state’s elaborate efforts to deflect and deny those abuses. After attempting to inform Qatari authorities of migrant worker abuse, he was thrown in jail, where he experienced physical abuse and torture at the hands of prison guards.
In a candid one-on-one interview with Play the Game founder Jens Sejer Andersen, Ibhais revisited the harrowing months he spent behind bars and the heavy price he paid for exposing Qatar’s exploitation of migrant...
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