The ambassador of Qatar 2022: “Homosexuality is a mental illness”

From the series: let’s start well. Twelve days after the start of the world CupQatar 2022, in what promises to be the most tormented edition of all time, this Khalid Salman, ambassador of the event, came out with a hair-raising statement, however inappropriate and anachronistic. Khalid Salman was giving an interview to the German broadcaster ZDF and at one point he said: «Homosexuality is haram (in Arabic it means“ forbidden ”). It is forbidden because it is a mental problem ».

A very serious sentence, which only rekindles the fire of the controversy against a country that – but no one is surprised, has been working like this for some time – in terms of humanitarian rights – is at the bottom of the ranking, in the full relegation zone. As recently as a few months ago, General Abdulaziz Abdullah al-Ansari, president of the National Counter-Terrorism Committee of the Ministry of the Interior and head of World Security, had quietly stated that “Whoever carries the rainbow flag in the stadiums of the World Cup risks his own safety”.

But in the world of football, indignation works on command. And only until the time of the next commercial. So, after a first moment of scandal, the exponents of FIFA – the leading body of football in the world – had directed their attention elsewhere. Yet we are talking about a country, Qatar, whose leaders are on trial for corruption (the tournament was bought with the petrodollars of the emirs) and where according to the famous survey of Guardian 6,000 workers died (almost all from Bangladesh and India, because in Qatar 90% of the workforce is foreign) during the construction of the eight world stadiums, where the rights of migrants are denied every day, women are discriminated against, freedom of expression is limited in both law and practice and the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people are shamelessly trampled: in Qatar la homosexual relationship constitutes in fact a criminal offense that can be punished with seven years of imprisonment.

To pretend astonishment now would be hypocritical. The gravity of Khalid Salman’s statements will not in the least affect the raising of the curtain on Qatar 2022. “Let’s talk about gays”, continued the ambassador of the tournament, “The most important thing is that all those who agree to come here also accept our rules. There would be problems with children seeing gays, because then they would learn something that is not right “. The interview was immediately interrupted by the spokesman of the organizing committee of the World Cup. During the conversation at the ZDF German journalist Thorsten Benner tried to counter – unsuccessfully – the sheikh’s raving statements and then shared the content on his Twitter profile. Commenting with a definitive: «How welcoming», «What a welcome».

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser called “horrible” Salman’s words. In Qatar – from Sunday 20 November when the inaugural match between Qatar and Ecuador will take place until Sunday 18 December – 1.2 million visitors / fans are expected. There will be some protests – who knows, maybe even from the national ones who are committed to taking sides in the fight for civil rights – always and in any case the use and consumption of cameras. And the boycott that every time is aired as the last hypothesis, will remain – in fact – the last of the hypotheses. So the balloon will roll for a month, and everything will be quickly forgotten.

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