While we're all still worked up about Qatar's blatant mistreatment of the many thousands of migrant workers who will soon begin building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup, here's a reminder that Qatar doesn't have the market cornered on turning international sporting events into humanitarian crises. Russia can play that game, too.


According to a BBC News report, Russian authorities in Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, are currently rounding up, interning, and deporting scores of migrant workers who came to Sochi to build Olympic infrastructure. And they aren't being nice about it:

There have been instances where workers were denied access to a lawyer, where police denied they were being held and where some have been expelled from the country without a lawyer present, it adds. Lawyer Alexander Popkov told the rights group he had seen 40 to 50 men held in a makeshift shed in the courtyard of Sochi's main police station on 24 September. He took a video of the scene, questioning the detainees on how long they had been held there. "One man said he had been there eight days... the men claim that they had not been given food, had no place to sleep, and that the shed did not provide protection from the rain, wind, or cold," the report said.


At this rate, I'd say there is a very good chance that the official slogan of the 2014 Winter Olympics will be "Goddammit, Russia."

[BBC]