LONDON: Amnesty International warned this summer’s football World Cup, spread across three North American countries, risks becoming a “stage for repression” in a report published Monday.
The London-based human rights organization’s report — “Humanity Must Win” — called on both FIFA and host countries the US, Canada and Mexico to take urgent action to protect fans, players and other communities.
FIFA has promised a tournament where everyone “feels safe, included and free to exercise their rights.”
But Amnesty said that pledge sits in “stark contrast” to conditions on the ground in all three host nations, especially the US, which hosts three-quarters of the 104 matches.
Amnesty described the US as facing a “human rights emergency” under the Trump administration, marked by mass deportations, arbitrary arrests and what it called “paramilitary-style” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.
