Thousands of migrant workers have died since Qatar was awarded to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Mohammed Suman Miah from Bangladesh died in Qatar on April 29, 2020 at the age of 34. The death certificate from the authorities states that he died of heart failure as a result of natural causes, but nothing about what these causes are. The family had borrowed $ 7,000 for the visa. Eventually, he got a job at a construction site. The temperature when he died was about 38 degrees Celsius in the shade. Suman's colleagues told his family that he died towards the end of the shift from a heart attack and that he was taken to the hospital but that his life could not be saved.

Mijanuar Rahman had been working in Qatar as private driver for eight years and recently changed employer. The widow Mosa Arifa Laizu says that her husband was in good health while he was in Bangladesh and that there where no record of heart disease while he lived in his home country. – It it hard for us to believe that MIjan died of heart attack in Qatar, she said.

Bine Bahadur Bishworkarma traveled to Qatar 20 years ago and worked until his death at a construction company. During all his years in Qatar, he always encouraged his children to study hard and try to get a job in Nepal. - He forbade the children to travel abroad and work, says the widow Nir Maya BK. When the pandemic struck, he became frightened. - His co-workers told me that they think he took his life because he was afraid of dying a painful death. We are now all like orphans. The whole family, says Nir Maya BK.

In February 2020, the family picked up the body of their 20-year-old Bishal Rayhan's at the airport. The company did not say anything beside that he died in a car accident in Qatar's capital Doha on January 27, 2020. - He had only worked in Qatar for nine months when this happened, says his 47-year-old father Bipul Rayhan. After receiving the body, Bishal's mother has been paralyzed and the father is now trying to survive with his disabled wife and the two children in Bhairab in Kishorganj in central Bangladesh.

In February 2020, Farzana Akhter lost her husband and gave birth to their first daughter. Instead of celebrating a new life, she had to go to the airport and claim Zobair Ahmed’s dead body along with $410 and a death certificate. He was 32 and had worked as a driver in Qatar for nine years. The official cause of death said “strangulation”. It was unclear if he had committed suicide or accidentally ended up hanging in his helmet strap. “I refuse to believe that he would have taken his own life,” the widow says. “I see no reason why.”

Zohorul’s death in Qatar couldn’t have happened at a worse time. The family was even before his death passing through economic hardship.  They had borrowed money from a local NGO, moneylenders and relatives to send Zohorul to Qatar to work as a cleaner. Rina Akter, elder sister, and Sharmin Akter, younger sister, of Zohorul claimed that their only brother did not have any previous health complications or diseases in Bangladesh.