Lost in the uproar over FIFA’s bribery/racketeering/wire fraud/money laundering scandal is the fact that not only did Qatar probably earn its 2022 World Cup site selection the old-fashioned way — they bought it — but that they are now using slave labor to build its stadiums.
Up to 1,200 migrant workers may have already lost their lives in construction accidents. (Qatar claims the number is 0.)
Jeremy Schaap
Westporter Jeremy Schaap reported on the nation’s despicable work conditions for ESPN. Now, his “E:60” story has won a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, given for investigative journalism on social justice issues. It’s the 1st RFK Award ever for the sports network.
Schaap — a 1988 Staples grad who has returned to Westport to live — traveled to Qatar to investigate working and living conditions, and to Nepal, where coffins from Qatar arrive almost daily.
The 47th Annual RFK Awards for Journalism were presented at the Newseum in Washington, DC last month. For Schaap, speaking with Kennedy’s widow Ethel was both professionally rewarding and personally gratifying: His father, noted journalist Dick Schaap, wrote a biography of Robert Kennedy, published just months before the senator was assassinated in 1968.
