Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of Qatar’s Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, admitted in a TV interview this week that there have been “between 400 and 500” migrant worker deaths...

There is clear evidence of thousands of migrant worker deaths in the lead-up to the World Cup. Authorities failed to conduct meaningful investigations into a large percentage of them, classifying many as unexplained or due to “natural causes.” Indeed, al-Thawadi’s comment that a precise death figure is “something that is being discussed” unintentionally admits what critics have claimed: that Qatari authorities actually maintain large amount of data on worker deaths and other abuses but don’t want to publicly reveal these figures due to the outrage they would likely create. Qatar’s own statistics show that 15,021 non-nationals died between 2010 and 2019, but without a breakdown of ages, occupations, and causes...