Denmark will travel to Qatar without families in human rights protest
FIFA World Cup Denmark

Danish football's human rights protests continue as new reports have emerged stating that the Denmark National team squad will not take their families to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

The host nation has faced a lot of criticism from several human rights groups over the treatment of its migrant workforce and concerns have also been raised about their disposition towards the LGBTQ+ community and how they will be treated when they get to the Middle Eastern nation.

A Guardian newspaper analysis in February 2021 reported that 6,500 South Asian migrants had lost their lives in Qatar since 2010 and the International Labour Organisation has said Qatar have been incompetent when it comes to reporting worker deaths.

Legislation had been passed to tackle the 'kafala' system, which binds foreign workers to their employers and stops employees from changing jobs and even impedes them from leaving the country without their employers' permission.

However, Amnesty's newly-released 'Qatar Reality Check 2021' report has found it is "business as usual" in many respects.

Jokob Hoyer, the DBU communication manager, claims that Denmark have limited how many will travel to Qatar on purpose because they don't want to 'contribute to any profit' for the World Cup hosts.

"We don't want to contribute to creating profit for Qatar," Hoyer said to newspaper Ekstra Bladet.

"Therefore, we have throttled down as much as possible on our travel activities.

"In previous finals, the players' wives and girlfriends have travelled with the board, but as I said, we have cancelled those trips."

Hummel, the sports brand responsible for making Denmark's kits for the World Cup released a statement revealing the reason behind their design of this year's kits.

"The colour of mourning," kit maker Hummel said in a post on Instagram releasing the black third choice strips.

"While we support the Danish national team all the way, this shouldn't be confused with support for a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives," they added.

"We wish to make a statement about Qatar's human rights record and its treatment of migrant workers that have built the World Cup Stadiums."

The Hummel logo as well as the country's badge and the white chevrons on the jerseys have been blacked out of the jerseys. They explain their reason behind this as well. "We don't wish to be visible at a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives." Their statement drew an angry reaction from the Qatar Supreme Committee.

The DBU have promised to limit the number of trips made to the country in order to avoid promoting the tournament and Denmark have announced that they will be removing the sponsors from their training kits and replacing them with human rights messages against Qatar at the World Cup.

Denmark qualified for the world cup as winners of their group, enjoying an almost perfect qualifying campaign where it played 10 matches and won nine, while losing one. It scored 30 goals and conceded just three.

The world's number 10 ranked nation begin their World Cup campaign against Tunisia on the 22nd of November in a group D clash. Other teams in the group are defending World Champions France and Australia.