As the world watches
the 2014 FIFA World Cup over one million people are protesting the cost and the
human rights violations being committed by police and security forces to
protect this corporate investment.
Working people in Brazil are
understandably frustrated with the public cost of the World Cup, an estimated
$14 billion. When compared to spending on social services, the cost of the
World Cup is the equivalent of 61% of funding for education, or 30% of the
funding for healthcare. Private companies, including those in the services and
construction industries, will be the main beneficiaries of this public money.
Adding to this cost is the forced evictions of the poor living in the favelas
(slums) and the dispossession of indigenous people from their lands to build
stadiums and parking lots.
Over one million
people in Brazil
have protested the cost of the World Cup, the cutbacks in social services or
increases in the cost of those services, the forced evictions, and other human
rights violations through the country.
The state security
services have cracked down viciously on all anti-FIFA demonstrations across the
country. At least a dozen or more people have been killed and hundreds have
been arrested. On the first day of the World Cup, 47 people were arrested, and
police shot rubber bullets at medics helping those that were wounded. The state
security services have been accused of killing of the poor and homeless,
including children, to “clean up” the favelas prior to the start of the World
Cup. To justify this violent response, the federal government has pushed to
pass legislation that would criminalize all anti-FIFA protests as “terrorism”,
with 12 to 30 year prison sentences for those convicted.
The state has deployed
more than 200,000 troops, armed with such weapons as Israeli drones, German
anti-aircraft tanks, and rooftop missile defense systems, to protect the World
Cup from protestors. The infamous American mercenary company, Blackwater, known
for its role in the U.S.
occupation of Iraq, is
allegedly in Brazil
helping with security for the World Cup.
The financial and
social cost of events like the World Cup and the Olympics to working people are
enormous.
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| "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land" - Vancouver 2010 |
During the London 2012
Olympics, 10,000 police officers and 13,000 troops, more than all British
forces in Afghanistan, along
with ships in the Thames, fighter jets, and
surface-to-air missile defense systems, were deployed to protect the £11
billion event. At a time when 2 million are unemployed, 27% of children live in
poverty, and austerity budgets are being forced on working people, £11 billion
came at a significant cost to working people.
The Sochi Winter
Olympics cost a staggering $51 billion, even though 18 million Russians live in
poverty and migrant workers were paid less than $2/hour to build the necessary
infrastructure.
In 2022 Qatar will host
the FIFA World Cup, and already hundreds of migrant workers have died working
on the World Cup infrastructure. Over 400 Nepalese and 700 Indian workers have
been have are already among the casualties. The conditions migrant workers are
forced to work in have been compared to slavery. Robert Booth for the Guardian
explains: “Workers described forced labour in 50C (122F) heat, employers who
retain salaries for several months and passports making it impossible for them
to leave and being denied free drinking water. The investigation found sickness
is endemic among workers living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions and
hunger has been reported. Thirty Nepalese construction workers took refuge in
the their country’s embassy and subsequently left the country, after they
claimed they received no pay.” The International Trade Union Confederation
estimates that 12 workers will die each week and around 4, 000 will have died
before the event starts.
The social and
financial cost of these international corporate events should be fought by
working people around the world at a time where millions are being forced into
unemployment and are denied their basic needs, democracy is being eroded, the
environment is being destroyed, and the threat of war is increasing.
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