In 2010, FIFA officially announced that Qatar would be the host for the 2022 soccer world cup. Five countries made their bid to host the competition, the global game which was understood by all ages. Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter told the press “We go to new lands. The Middle East and Arabic world has been waiting for a long time. So I’m a happy president when we talk about the development of football.”

For the Good of the Game

No doubt this was a glorious moment for the country, a soccer-loving nation, and the fans will have their memorable moments of the tournament. This was their first qualification in the world cup history and will do everything possible to be competitive.  

 Despite all the excitement world attention was drawn to one significant matter. Concerns on Human Rights for migrant workers who were involved in building the much-needed stadiums. Meanwhile, UK daily newspaper The Guardian claimed that more than 6500 workers have died on stadium construction sites since the World Cup was awarded to the Gulf State in 2010.

 Human Rights record was never a favored subject within the Gulf States, despite thousands of labour force being attracted each year from different countries for employment opportunities. History and present-day incidents reveal many tragedies. It was a proven fact that Qatar was not following work ethics, health, and safety policies, and other labour welfare matters. Asian nationals from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka migrant workers had to undergo devastating hardship when work started on the eight stadiums.

This particular news became headlines. Soccer playing nations, other Human Rights protection institutes, and media showed concerns. Going one step further International football teams from Europe started showing their support towards “safety of all workers” by wearing jerseys with slogans before the commencement of their qualification round matches. The Dutch team message was “Football support change” and the German team “Human Rights” and Norwegians “Human Rights on and off the field”. It was a very strong signal to the host and a sign of hope to all migrant workers.

The world’s attention was building. The Gulf State came under pressure and agreed to implement new work guidelines on safety for its workers. The involvement of the International Labour Organization (ILO) made matters more pressing for the Gulf nation. At the same time, new implementations of the labour law were highly acknowledged by institutions worldwide including Amnesty International.

Going further there are other areas officials need to work on. Have the authorities compensated all workers who lost their lives up to now? Why wasn’t more attention not shown earlier by the concerned parties to provide better working conditions for the migrant workers? Had it been done, could many lives have been saved?

For the finals, 24 teams will qualify. The tournament itself will not be second to other previous tournaments. The Gulf nation will throw all its resources to bring the event to a success. Nothing wrong with that. Qatar’s team will perform at the highest level, speedy and dribbling South Americans will come storming. Determined African nations will make their presence felt, Europe will bring adventure and style. Asia will bring their own glamour. All teams will play with great sportsmanship and finally, only one nation will be crowned as world champions.

Germany and Netherlands join Norway in Qatar World Cup human rights message

Keeping to traditions team players will stand in front of their national flags singing their national anthems before each game.

At that very moment, from their hearts they will not forget to pay respect and gratitude to all people who made this possible especially to those migrant workers who lost their precious lives trying to make this beautiful game possible.  

It’s hard to believe that you could make a good definition of “Tasteless” music. They are certain genres that I detest that others are obsessed with liking. There are some words to songs that I consider absolute trash and destructive to our society. Yet others, even people that are within your circle listening to it all the time.

I would say at least this; If you make a change to the instrumentation, does it still hold up somewhat? If it doesn’t then it’s not really the music that you are enjoying. If you remove or change the words, replace them with different words or La La La etc., do you still think the song is somewhat interesting? If not then it really isn’t the music that you find interesting. If it is a different singer singing the exact same song, does it still kind of work, etc.? I really do think that the Iraj wrote good musical songs, but I don’t think that Mathinta and Victor Rathnayake  is a good musical composition because of what I have suggested.

For me, this is hate music of any kind.

I might find some genres like pop a little fluffy and bubbly. In wester world, like twerk, juke and booty house can be demeaning to women (but it was developed in and to strip clubs so we can not expect much). I love a dark, satanic thrash at time to time but look at that as a stage show instead of a religious slight. In the end you could probably find some form of issue with most genres if you really wanted to, but there is only one music form that really makes me sick.

That is hate music. In Sri Lanka the most known kind of hate music made popular by Iraj and his hate filled fans. There are other forms in Sri Lanka just less known. Frankly, I have no desire to know them better. Just enough to stay away from them.

It’s a disgusting use of music in my mind and probably the one type of music I refuse to open my mind to.

I am going to end this by stating something a little off the topic. Which is my reference to people who hate every thing. Haters are not all racist. The movement was originally a working class, multi-racial movement that mainly listened to reggae and ska offshoots. Some eventually highjacked the movement and now we have a hard time (especially in Sri Lanka) separating Nationalists from racism. There are many types of Nationalists and yes a lot of them listen to hate music and it can be confusing to ones not familiar with the subculture.  Sorry for ending with an off topic rant. I just feel more should be aware of this when talking about hate music and the cultures involved.