Jennifer Lopez urged to ax Atlanta show for Qatar Airways; airline disputes claims

"The problem is that Qatar Airways Group  is owned by the nation of Qatar, where b eing LGBT is illegal, punishable by up to five years in prison. Other illicit  sexual relations are punished by flogging, the penalty for adultery being 100 lashes.

  Labor Unions are also illegal in Qatar, where immigrants make up 90 percent of the  workforce. Upon entering the country, their passports are seized and the migrant workers are often forced into slavery. Those who protest or try to leave are thrown in prison.

Qatar is one of the worst countries in the world for human trafficking and  slavery.  Human Rights groups are lining up against Qatar Airways and there will be  a massive protest outside the Fox Theater on May 17.

Qatar's Chief Executive Officer, His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker maintains  'With every new destination we serve, we seek to become a part of that community.' This is concerning especially in Atlanta, the bastion of the civil rights movement and birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr."

"Labor reforms enacted 2015 still require workers to secure their employer's permission to change jobs or leave the country, preventing them from leaving abusive situations. Having previously placed few restrictions on the activities of international media, authorities detained and interrogated two groups of foreign journalists who were attempting to report on migrant workers' living and working conditions."

"The principal human rights problems were the inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections, restriction of fundamental civil liberties, and widespread denial of the rights of migrant workers. The monarch-appointed government prohibited organized political parties and restricted civil liberties, including freedoms of speech, press, and assembly and access to a fair trial for persons held under the Protection of Society Law and Combating Terrorism Law. Other continuing human rights concerns included restrictions on the freedoms of religion and movement, as foreign laborers could not freely travel abroad. Trafficking in persons, primarily in the domestic worker and labor sectors, was a significant problem. Legal, institutional, and cultural discrimination against women limited their participation in society."

"The allegations made by the organization that calls itself AWARE are patently false. 

Qatar Airways respects the laws of every country it serves, and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion or nationality. The airline recruits from all over the world and bases its hiring decisions on the ability of the candidate to provide world-class service. 

Qatar Airways questions how a newly founded organization has managed to fund a multi-million dollar campaign that is apparently only targeting a single entity. 

Qatar Airways is proud of its employees, and offers leading tax-free pay, housing, global medical coverage and other benefits that combined result in a highly desirable career opportunity. More than 112 nationalities are represented in its cabin crew staff alone, men and women who come to Qatar Airways for the career opportunity that may not be available elsewhere.  As a measure of how competitive Qatar Airways roles are, the airline currently receives 5,000 applications every day for cabin crew positions alone. 

Within the Group, more than 160 nationalities are represented. Qatar Airways employs 40,000 people." 

Dozens of Nepalese migrant labourers have died in Qatar in recent weeks and thousands more are enduring appalling labour abuses, a Guardian investigation has found, raising serious questions about Qatar's preparations to host the 2022 World Cup.

This summer, Nepalese workers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, many of them young men who had sudden heart attacks. The investigation found evidence to suggest that thousands of Nepalese, who make up the single largest group of labourers in Qatar, face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern-day slavery, as defined by the International Labour Organisation, during a building binge paving the way for 2022."

" Human rights groups have called for more fundamental reform of the kafala system that ties workers to their employer and forbids them from leaving the country without permission. It has led to situations that have been compared to modern day slavery, where unscrupulous middlemen charge large sums to find employment for workers in Qatar and other Gulf states but leave them working long days in unsafe and insanitary conditions – and, in some cases, without pay."