With World Cup Next Month, is Qatar Stepping Up Anti-LGBTQ+ Harassment?

Qatar's status as the host of this year's World Cup has raised eyebrows due to its hostility toward LGBTQ+ people. With the event coming up next month, is Qatar stepping up harassment of sexual minorities?

UK newspaper the Independent reported that "Qatar has been accused of arbitrarily arresting LGBTQ+ people and subjecting them to ill treatment in detention."

The Independent cited Human Rights Watch, which reported that "LGBT people interviewed said that their mistreatment took place as recently as September 2022, as Qatar prepared to host the 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup in November and even as the government came under intense scrutiny for its treatment of LGBT people."

Human Rights Watch added that it had "documented six cases of severe and repeated beatings and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022.

"Security forces arrested people in public places based solely on their gender expression and unlawfully searched their phones," the NGO's report added. "As a requirement for their release, security forces mandated that transgender women detainees attend conversion therapy sessions at a government-sponsored 'behavioral healthcare' center."

"Security officers also inflicted verbal abuse, extracted forced confessions, and denied detainees access to legal counsel, family, and medical care, the NGO claimed," according to the Independent. "All six said that police forced them to sign pledges indicating that they would 'cease immoral activity,'" the site said.

One interviewee, a transgender woman, described being beaten by police who claimed she was "imitating women" and declared, "You gays are immoral, so we will be the same to you" as a justification for pummeling her.

Moreover, every one of the half-dozen people Human Rights Watch interviewed "described security officials forcing them to unlock their phones and took screenshots of private pictures and chats from their devices, as well as contact information of other LGBTQ+ people" – a classic pattern in how totalitarian regimes treat their people that resembles treatment LGBTQ+ people have suffered in Chechnya.

A Qatari official "categorically" denied the Human Rights Watch report and said that the organization's claims were "unequivocally false," the newspaper noted.

Soccer legend David Beckham has drawn criticism for acting as a spokesperson for Qatar. More recently, Beckham made headlines when he reportedly blocked the first high-profile out Qatari, Dr. Nas Mohamed, on social media. Dr. Mohamed, who is seeking asylum in America, has pushed for the world's attention to Qatar's record of human rights abuses, especially with regard to LGBTQ+ people.

Dr. Mohamed said that not only was he blocked by Beckham, but that his efforts had "been ignored completely by FIFA, FIFA officials, [and] World Cup officials..."

Dr. Mohamed has also expressed concerns that LGBTQ+ soccer fans traveling to Qatar for the World Cup could be in danger thanks to the anti-gay animus of the nation's society, DW reported.

"You're now bringing LGBT fans to a bubble that is trained to gay-bash and has not seen LGBT visibility before and would perceive it as an attack," Dr. Mohamed pointed out, before adding: "I really don't think there are going to be people to protect them if they do get attacked, so I really worry more about the public attacking them than the officials."