It sounds like a scene from "Alice in Wonderland": Qatar invites foreign journalists to see and report on the conditions in labor camps, then detains them and confiscates their equipment for visiting those same camps.
A BBC crew, led by Middle East correspondent Mark Lobel, arrived in Qatar on an invitation from the prime minister’s office, to be a part of a press tour to show the current conditions in labor camps for the thousands of foreign workers in the Gulf state to build facilities for the upcoming World Cup.
The government had promised to show the crew a substandard labor camp – which the world knows exists after the country has come under incredible international pressure to improve their guest worker conditions – along with a newer, improved "village." The BBC was to join other Western press on the trip, including the Associated Press, AFP, the Guardian and Le Monde.
So what went wrong?
According to Lobel, while doing some additional reporting, he and three members of his crew were suddenly surrounded by eight white vans and forced off the road.
"A dozen security officers frisked us in the street, shouting at us when we tried to talk. They took away our equipment and hard drives and drove us to their headquarters,” Lobel wrote on the BBC website . "An hour into my grilling, one of the interrogators brought out a paper folder of photographs which proved they had been trailing me in cars and on foot for two days since the moment I'd arrived."
The group was held overnight and faced further questioning on what was suppose to be the first day of the official tour.
"Thirteen hours of waiting around and questioning later, one of the interrogators snapped. 'This is not Disneyland,' he barked. 'You can't stick your camera anywhere,’” Lobel wrote. "In perfect English and with more than a touch of malice, he threatened us with another four days in prison - to teach us a lesson.”
After a second night in jail, the crew was released – though the men were under a travel ban for several more days and still have not had their equipment returned. The next day, government authorities took the crew on an abbreviated version of the tour that it had missed while in detention.
Coming just weeks after a German crew was also held while trying to report on the conditions that the World Cup laborers face in Doha, the incident seems to re-enforce the idea that Qatar is failing miserably at trying to contain the damage to its reputation.
But the government’s response to the BBC report raises a few questions that might be worth considering.
“We gave the reporters free rein to interview whomever they chose and to roam unaccompanied in the labour villages,” the Qatari government said in a statement . “Perhaps anticipating that the Government would not provide this sort of access, the BBC crew decided to do their own site visits and interviews in the days leading up to the planned tour.”
It’s not shocking that the BBC was expecting a white-washed, PR tour and had decided to try and dig deeper than the Qatari handlers wanted.
“The problems that the BBC reporter and his crew experienced could have been avoided if they had chosen to join the other journalists on the press tour,” the Qatari statement continued.
“They would have been able to visit – in broad daylight – the very camps they tried to break into at night. Reporters from the Associated Press, AFP, the Guardian and Le Monde have filed stories on what they saw and heard in Qatar, and we invite interested readers to review their reports, which are available online.
“By trespassing on private property and running afoul of Qatari laws, the BBC reporter made himself the story.”
There’s one definite allegation in there – and a few things that are a bit interesting. The government says the crew was trespassing. Lobel has rejected this allegation.
The BBC also rejected Qatar's allegations in a statement.
"The Qatari authorities have made a series of conflicting allegations to justify the detention, all of which the team rejects. We are pressing the Qatari authorities for a full explanation and for the return of the confiscated equipment," the British company said.
Was Lobel trespassing? Was that why he was arrested? Would they hold him for 36 hours for trespassing?
Well, as a Middle Eastern correspondent, Lobel should be quite familiar with the strictness of the Gulf countries when it comes to violating minor laws. And considering the controversy surrounding the labor conditions in Qatar, a journalist – like all of Lobel's colleagues managed to – would be expected to make sure he wasn’t crossing any lines that could land him in prison.
But there’s a detail from the Qatari response that is missing in the BBC report that is interesting, if purely circumstantial.
“The very camps they tried to break into at night.”
However, there is no time element for the initial contact between the police and the reporters in the original BBC report of the incident. The first instance where Lobel mentions what time it is when he says that at 1 a.m. the crew was taken to the local prison. This came after he described repeated questioning and the unveiling of the surveillance photos of the crew.
The BBC has updated Lobel’s statement by posting the Qatar government response – but included only two paragraphs of the allegations and not the line about breaking into the camp at night.
Driving around at night doesn’t mean the crew had broken into – or planned to break into – private property. But it does make us stop and wonder.
It's also interesting that Lobel decided to investigate the camps before the official tour – when he still didn't even know which camps the government would be showing or what the access provided to laborers would be like. Why even accept the authorities' invitation if you are so convinced ahead of time that they aren't going to provide you with adequate access? Unless you figure that the invitation provides you a shield to do the reporting that you know would otherwise land you in detention.
However, even if the crew broke the law – Qatari officials should have known better than to hold them for 36 hours.
If Doha has anymore World Cup-related scandals, then moving the matches to the winter time is going to be the least of its problems.