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13 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 30 NOVEMBER 2022 OPINION Jocelyn Hutton, University of Oxford; Carolyn Hoyle, University of Oxford, and Lucy Harry, University of Oxford QATARI authorities are ignor- ing international law by failing to inform embassies when their citizens are arrested, detained or are pending trial for a death sentence. Our new data reveals that be- tween 2016 and 2021 at least 21 people were under sentence of death in Qatar. Of the 21, only three cases involved Qatari na- tionals and only one involved a woman (who was accused of murder). The remaining 18 were made up of foreign na- tionals: seven from India, two from Nepal, five from Bangla- desh, one Tunisian and three Asians of unknown nationality. Of these cases, 17 related to homicide and one a convic- tion for drug trafficking. The majority of the murder cases involved male migrant labour- ers from South Asia, convicted of crimes related to their pre- carious migrant worker status. The remaining murder cases involved one Tunisian man, and two defendants' where the nationalities were unknown. In December 2017, male Nepalese migrant worker An- il Chaudhary was sentenced to death for murdering a Qa- tari. He was executed by firing squad in May 2020 bringing an end to a 20-year hiatus on the death penalty in Qatar. We have learned that Chaud- hary's embassy was only noti- fied of his scheduled execution the day before, leaving them inadequate time to provide meaningful support at this final stage of the judicial process. While we do not know all of the details of the circumstances of his offence, every defendant, regardless of the severity of the alleged crime, should be afford- ed a fair legal defence – Chaud- hary was not. As Qatar moves into the spot- light as the host of the FIFA World Cup, so too, should its human rights record. Chaud- hary is just one of an invisible migrant workforce who are deemed unworthy of due pro- cess. These latest findings on Qatar are part of our wider Mapping Death Row project which we are compiling on the preva- lence and experiences of for- eign nationals under sentence of death, or executed, in the Middle East and Asia between 2016 and 2021. So far, we have gathered information on 1,240 cases, including 625 from the Gulf region, 330 of whom were from South Asia. The vulnerability of a for- eign national arrested abroad is recognised in internation- al law with the UN's Vienna Convention on Consular Re- lations 1963. Qatar acceded to this convention in 1998, which mandates that, when a foreign national is arrested, detained, or pending trial in another state, the authorities of the host nation must inform the indi- vidual without delay that they are entitled to have consular officials informed of their de- tention, and if they request it, the consulate must be notified immediately. But our research has found that the Qatari authorities do not honour this agreement in practice. We have found that this occurs across the Gulf for people like Chaudhary – mi- grant workers found guilty of crimes without having access to lawyers who speak their own language and executed without appropriate post-conviction review processes or assistance. Astonishingly, Qatar has the highest ratio of migrants to citizens in the world: migrant workers make up 94% of the country's labour force and 86% of the total population. Indeed, the population of Qa- tar has grown by 40% since the announcement of the World Cup bid in 2010, largely from unskilled migrant workers. Yet those migrant workers – most- ly from Nepal, India and Bang- ladesh – are a highly transient and exploited population. Our new evidence also shows that the capital crimes for which migrant workers are convicted across the Gulf re- gion as a whole are inextricably connected to their precarious migratory and economic situ- ations. Damning evidence has emerged about the abuse of migrant workers, particularly those working on the World Cup infrastructure, who have died because of extreme work- ing and living conditions (typ- ically from heat, exhaustion, insufficient food and water, inadequate medical provision, and poor safety regulations). Nepalis are aware of the high death rate, as one man who frequently travels to Qatar de- scribed to us: "Every time you land in Nepal, a few coffins are taken off the plane first." In- deed, Nepali politicians have reported that three to four Nepalis arrive home in coffins from the Gulf every day. Family members in Ghodghans, Nepal, in March 2022 mourning Kripal Mandal, a labourer who died at the age of 39 in Qatar. Shutterstock/ Sebastian Castelier But less is known about the death penalty in this jurisdic- tion, and how capital punish- ment intersects with the issue of migrant worker abuse. Chaudhary and blood money The case of Chaudhary is one such example. We know he travelled to Qatar in 2015 to work as a labourer in a car washing firm. He was from the village of Aurahi in the Mahot- tari district of Nepal, a region with the second-largest source of migrant labour in the coun- try, characterised by some as a place "where the streets have no men", a consequence of many unskilled migrants trav- elling to Gulf states. He was the only son of Gita and Shyam. The family took out a loan of 150,000 NRS (about £982) to secure him a job overseas, in the hope that his wages would support them as they struggled to make a liv- ing in Nepal. Now they are left destitute, as are many whose family members never return from the Gulf. Chaudhary's case highlights Qatar's death row and the invisible migrant workforce deemed unworthy of due process Jocelyn Hutton and Lucy Harry PAGE 14-15

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