Two British human rights workers, who had gone missing over a week ago while probing conditions of migrant labourers building facilities for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, have been detained in the Gulf emirate.
Qatar's foreign ministry has confirmed that human rights researcher Krishna Upadhyaya and photographer Ghimire Gundev, who work for the Norway-based Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), were arrested on August 31 and are being interrogated for violating the emirate's laws.
The ministry in a statement issued yesterday said that the actions taken against the two Britons are consistent with the principles of human rights enshrined in the constitution, according to Qatar's official QNA news agency.
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It said a representative of the British embassy in Doha had visited the two.
The two British citizens of Nepalese extraction were visiting Qatar to investigate the treatment of Nepalese migrant workers, the Guardian news paper said.
Qatar had given undertakings to improve labour conditions of expatriate workers after world football governing body FIFA came under huge pressure from rights groups to review its decision to award the emirate the 2022 World Cup.
On its website, GNRD said that a British authority representative who visited the two had conveyed a message from Upadhyaya to his family saying, "I am well, I have been well looked after and I will be home soon. We have been arrested due to problems with our paperwork.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
