Qatar World Cup: Paris to scrap showing matches on big screens amid concerns over rights

It follows similar moves by other French cities, despite France going in as the defending champion.

“There is the problem of the environmental impact,” Pierre Rabadan, deputy mayor of Paris in charge of sports, told France Bleu Paris radio on Tuesday, citing “air-conditioned stadiums.”

“The conditions in which these facilities have been built are to be questioned as well,” he added. 

The move comes despite the city's football club, Paris Saint-Germain, being owned by Qatar Sports Investments.

“We have very constructive relations with the club and its entourage yet it doesn't prevent us to say when we disagree,” Rabadan said. 

A growing number of French cities are refusing to erect screens to broadcast World Cup matches to protest Qatar’s human rights record.

The mayor of Strasbourg, the northeast seat of the European Parliament and the European Court of Human Rights, cited allegations of human rights abuses and exploitation of migrant workers in Qatar as the reason for canceling public broadcasts of the World Cup. 

“It’s impossible for us to ignore the many warnings of abuse and exploitation of migrant workers by non-governmental organizations,” Jeanne Barseghian said in a statement. “We cannot condone these abuses, we cannot turn a blind eye when human rights are violated.” 

And then, there’s the impact on the environment, Barseghian said. 

“While climate change is a palpable reality, with fires and droughts and other disaster, organizing a soccer tournament in the desert defies common sense and amounts to an ecological disaster,” she said.

Arnaud Deslandes, a deputy mayor of Lille, said that by canceling public viewing of matches, the northern city wanted to send a message to FIFA about the irreparable damage of the Qatar tournament to the environment.

“We want to show FIFA that money is not everything,” Deslandes told The Associated Press in an interview. 

As for residents' reactions to the city's decision, he added: “I have yet to meet a person in Lille who was disappointed by our decision.”

The gas-rich emirate has been fiercely criticized in the past decade for its treatment of migrant workers, mostly from south Asia, who were needed to build tens of billions of dollars’ worth of stadiums, metro lines, roads and hotels.

Qatar has been equally fierce in denying accusations of human rights abuses, and has repeatedly rejected allegations that the safety and health of 30,000 workers who built the World Cup infrastructure have been jeopardized. 

Environmental activists across France have supported the cancellation of public broadcasting in fan zones because outdoor viewing of the Nov. 20-Dec. 19 tournament would use energy that the country has been storing for winter.

In the southwestern city of Bordeaux, authorities cited concerns with the energy cost associated with outdoor public broadcasts in the winter cold. The French government is calling for a sharp 10% reduction in the country’s energy use to avoid the risk of rationing cuts this winter amid tensions with supplier Russia over the war in Ukraine. 

“We are trying hard to save energy,” Bordeaux mayor Pierre Hurmic told the AP. 

He added: “It doesn’t make sense to roll out the red carpet to such a costly event in terms of energy and the environmental impact.”

(AP)