Posters in Amsterdam show names of migrant workers in protest against Qatar World Cup

Posters showing the fictitious names of construction workers who died in Qatar are hanging in various places in Amsterdam. in Amsterdam. They are a protest against the football World Cup starting in the Gulf state on November 20. The posters are hung on free columns and boards, where anyone can put a non-commercial message.

Ramjeet Chhatta, electrician, 1975-2019, from India, one poster states. Suresh Devaki, bricklayer, 1999-2021, from Nepal. Anit Hamal, carpenter, 1994-2020, from Sri Lanka. The posters look like popular collectible cards for football players. But they show no faces to illustrate the anonymous 6,500 migrant workers who died in constructing infrastructure and stadiums for the Qatar World Cup.

Het Parool reported these protest posters hanging on Weesperplein and Javastraat, but an NL Times reporter found no trace of them. They did find signs that a large number of posters had been removed recently, including piles of wet posters left on the ground at one location on Celebestraat.

The number of killed migrant workers comes from The Guardian, which the posters also refer to. The newspaper collected figures from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, countries where many construction workers who worked in Qatar came from. The number of construction workers who died is likely higher because the newspaper couldn’t get figures from Kenya and the Philippines, which also send many migrant workers to Qatar.

It is not clear who is behind the poster protest. The poster reads “EJMG22.”