‘Who are you working for?’: Jailed activist Malcolm Bidali reveals extent of Qatar suspicion

The Kenyan security guard spoke to Sebastian Castelier and Quentin Muller about being imprisoned after calling for better conditions for those working in Qatar

Malcolm Bidali (Sebastian Castelier)

A Kenyan security guard arrested in Qatar after writing a blog exposing the terrible conditions faced by a large number of foreign workers in the World Cup host nation says the authorities there quizzed him about collaborating with human rights groups.

Malcolm Bidali told The Independent that he was repeatedly asked by state intelligence officers about he had been in contact with. Interviewed by The Independent in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the 29 year old said he believes Qatar’s State Security Bureau (SSB) suspected him of collaborating with international human rights organisations in an attempt to tarnish the image of the 2022 World Cup host nation.

“Do you know so and so? Do you know that before he went to this organisation, he used to work for this company based in the United Arab Emirates,” Mr Bidali said. “They knew stuff about people,” he added.

The primary focus of Qatari authorities was to dismantle “any kind of union among migrant workers” in Qatar, he added.

“Who are you working for? What kind of network have you established in Qatar?” were questions he was asked after being arrested in May.

He was detained on May 4 after the authorities realised he was the person writing about workers’ conditions in Qatar under the pen name Noah Articulates.

Mr BIdali was subsequently charged with “offences related to payments received by a foreign agent for the creation and distribution of disinformation within the State of Qatar” and spent almost four weeks in prison, much of it in solitary confinement.

He was released in early June and left the Gulf state in August, but only after paying a fine of 25,000 Qatari riyals, about £5,000.

A migrant rights group covered the fine. Doha accused Bidali of sharing “fake news,” though campaigners say his conviction was “handed down without him ever having been formally charged, brought before a court or even informed of the nature of the criminal charges he was facing”.

He was released after international outrage about his case, which once again highlighted the treatment of international workers in Qatar, who number almost two million out of a population of some 2.5 million people, in the run up to next year’s World Cup.

On Tuesday, Mr Bidali, now back in Kenya, took to social media for the first time since his incarceration, to say thank you to those who supported him and talk about his time being held in Qatar.

“First two weeks were the hardest, consisting of intense interrogation, incommunicado status, & deprivation of freedoms I had previously taken for granted. I thought to myself, “So this is it for me huh? Well, f**k.” I was convinced I’d be locked up for a couple of years at least,” he tweeted.

Writing under his pen name for the advocacy group Migrant-Rights.org, Bidali provided rare first-person accounts detailing everyday abuses faced by a vast number of migrant workers in Qatar, including cramped accommodation, the illegal confiscation of passports, low wages, but also the impact of recent labour reforms on the life of low-income workers.

Qatar introduced the Gulf’s first non-discriminatory minimum wage in 2021 as the World Cup host country bowed to international pressure over its treatment of migrant workers.

Bidali’s activities were “not even about unionising”, a spokesperson for Migrant-Rights.org told The Independent.

“He only raised his voice... but even a sniff of such agency is seen as a threat. It is seen as empowering others like him to speak up, not to be silent in the face of unconscionable exploitation”. Any action that threatens the status quo will be quashed.

“The arrest of Bidali is a brutal reminder that migrant workers who make public their grievances by communicating with journalists and human rights activists are at risk.”

According to Bidali, SSB agents did not explicitly mention the soccer tournament during the interrogation process but asked “why are you working with our enemies?”, alluding to Qatar’s suspicions that foreign actors were acting against it ahead of kick-off in Novemeber 2022.

Qatari security forces’ lack of understanding and compassion towards migrant workers who form the backbone of the gas-rich economy shocked the labour rights activist who returned to Kenya in mid-August 2021 after paying in Doha a fine of GBP5,000 (QAR 25,000).

SSB agents repeatedly questioned the relevance of one of Bidali’s social network posts that described migrant workers choosing to sleep on the plastic wrapping of their mattresses, despite how uncomfortable that might feel, in order to avoid ‘colonies of bed bugs’.

“This is a non-issue. What do you want? People to have king-size mattresses? Everyone to have a villa?”, an SSB agent reportedly told him.

Doha’s industrial area, where about 425,000 migrant workers live in packed company accommodation, is “not fit for human habitation”, Bidali commented. “It is where Qatar hides all the workers. It is a nasty place”.

Some in Qatar though accuse him of accepting money from international organisations.

“We know that Mr. Bidali was contacted by a network and that he supplied messages that got broadcasted. He is paid for this,” an official at Qatar’s National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) speaking on the condition of anonymity said during Bidali’s detention.

The NHRC source accused international news organisations of “mixing up things” in order to “fuel a demonization campaign against Qatar that is supported by neighbouring countries”.

The Qatari government’s communications office did not respond to a request for comment.

But the response of the NHRC shows the sensitivities surrounding his case and the general issue of workers’ rights in Qatar, especially in the run up to the World Cup.

“Inside Qatar there has been a considerable amount of speculation about who or what might be behind some of the stories that have been carried in the media,” said Simon Chadwick, Director of the Centre for the Eurasian Sport Industry at the EmLyon Business School.

He told The Independent there were instances of “fairly orchestrated campaigns” aimed at discrediting and cultivating negative views of Qatar, as well as fundamentally destabilising it.

During his ordeal, the Kenyan ambassador to Qatar contacted Bidali and suggested he “resign and go home” if the working conditions were not up to his standards. “It was a heartbreaking thing to hear. The Kenyan Embassy to Qatar is useless,” the activist said.

Despite recent reforms, migrant workers are still banned under Qatari law from forming or joining unions. Bidali concluded: “If workers have unions, it would strip Qataris of their power because they cannot exploit them. As soon as workers unite, it is over for the Qataris.”