sport news World Cup: The FA are slammed for 'completely lacking in courage' over human ... trends now
The FA is 'completely lacking in courage' to speak out against human rights abuses in Qatar and has not set up the briefings for England players which it promised, Amnesty International declared on Tuesday night.
After a Sportsmail investigation into the scandal of young Nepalese workers who have died while working to prepare Qatar for the World Cup, the human rights group said the governing body was 'running down time' on calling out the plight of workers and didn't want to 'rock the boat.'
The FA, which indicated in December that Gareth Southgate's players would be briefed on Qatar by external speakers including Amnesty, claimed that the players had been briefed by Amnesty.
But the organisation responded to say that FA was playing with 'semantics.' They said their understanding is that a briefing of Southgate's players took placing merely using Amnesty documents.
'We have never been to Wembley or anywhere else to provide a briefing to players. They only have to say the word and we will be there next week' said a senior Amnesty official.
Peter Frankental, Amnesty International UK's Economic Affairs Programme Director, told Sportsmail: 'A number of half promises have been made through the media about human rights groups briefing players. But no request has been made to us or any other organisation.'
The FA are 'completely lacking in courage' to speak out against human rights abuses, Amnesty International say
The FA indicated that England's players would be briefed about the situation in December
Several meetings between Amnesty and the FA have taken place and there has been contact with the organisation's research team.
But Mr Frankental said: 'Those meetings have not been particularly constructive. It's not that individuals from the FA are not interested but we feel the FA, as a matter of policy, are reluctant to call out these violations.
'It's a softly, softly approach, to avoid sending the wrong message to FIFA, Qatar and the other key players. But 12 years after the World Cup was awarded, we would expect them to be much more engaged in human rights abuses and taking a stance, like we have found the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark FAs have done. They seem to be completely lacking in courage when it comes to taking any steps.'
Sportsmail's investigation established that 239 Nepalese workers died in
