Belgium, (Washington Insider Magazine)-Recently, the news that shook the globe was in the media highlights: Denmark will wear team jerseys during the World Cup that condemn the host country Qatar’s reputation on human rights, with a black alternative to commemorate migrant laborers who died while working on tournament preparations.
After choosing plain jerseys to make a huge World Cup statement on the host country’s record on human rights, Denmark has received flak from Qatar.
In response to the jersey, Qatar’s World Cup organizers slammed Hummel’s, alleging the brand was “trivializing” its efforts in the gulf country.
According to Qatar, just three workers died in workplace accidents while working on the 8 stadiums in the Doha area. However, it has been implicated with underreporting fatalities related to a larger development.
The committee claimed that several international human rights organizations have “recognized” Qatar’s reforms as a model that has expedited development and benefited lives.”
On the other side, Milan Stefanovski, a political analyst from North Macedonia who writes for Brussels Morning and is a specialist in international relations, asserts that Denmark is not the nation that can represent the “voice” of the purportedly repressed workers in Qatar.
He questions why Denmark is now targeting Qatar rather than reforming itself.
Stefanovski argues that since the Danish view on the matter is clear, why has Denmark violated the human rights of Greenlanders?
He notes that the Greenlandic Council on Human Rights has lately made the case that Denmark’s campaign against Greenland may have seriously violated human rights.
Stefanovski adds that from 1966 through the middle of the 1970s, thousands of Greenlandic women and girls were essentially compelled to have contraceptive spirals implanted. This is a little-known narrative identical to the one going on right now in Qatar.
The expert emphasizes that reducing Greenland’s population increase was the campaign’s stated objective. The number of children born out of wedlock and to women under the age of 20 worried Danish authorities. The modernization of Greenland was further hampered by the population expansion, adding to the Danish state’s expenses above what had been anticipated.
In light of these two incidents in Greenland and Qatar, it’s noteworthy to recall that Amnesty International filed a complaint against Denmark in 2021, alleging that residents of “non-western” origins continued to experience inequality in social housing. Laws on returns, externalizing the handling of asylum and residence applications, and continuing violations of refugees’ right to family life were also passed. Initiatives on corporate accountability and sexuality education were getting postponed.
Then, Amnesty International declared that a planned legislation proposal on data retention put freedom of speech and privacy at risk.
Following this response, the European Court of Human Rights declared in July that Denmark’s mandated 3-year waiting period for family reunification—which would affect some 4,000 Syrian refugees—violated the right to family life.
In the same year, the Danish government passed a contentious law that targets immigrant districts for harsher enforcement. Rights organizations caution against such actions since they can be in violation of the law.Furthermore, the political situation in Denmark is even scarier when we consider that this country rates itself as one of the world’s foremost leaders in the upholding of human rights. However, in addition to growing international criticism of the Nyrup Rasmussen government’s human rights violations, a word-for-word analysis of the 30 different articles in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights reveals that Denmark is in violation of each and every one of these articles.