NRK journalist drops WC trip – VG
After being arrested in Qatar, NRK journalist Halvor Ekeland (33) chooses to stay at home during the football World Cup.
Ekeland confirms this in this interview with VG.
Together with photographer Lokman Ghorbani, the 33-year-old was imprisoned for 32 hours in Qatar almost a year ago. The authorities in the turbulent desert state claimed the two had photographed on private land, while the NRK team believed they had obtained the necessary permission.
Well, it’s only four weeks until the football World Cup kicks off in Qatar. It happens without Halvor Ekeland.
– I have said that I need to know what I signed while I was under arrest in order to feel safe about traveling. I have contacted the Qatari authorities, Qatari police, the Ministry of Justice of Qatar, the Qatari embassy in Stockholm, FIFA and the Norwegian embassy in Abu Dhabi, but none of them have been able to help me get my police documents, says he.
FIFA has also been in contact with the authorities in Qatar, and received guarantees for Ekeland’s security during the World Cup, which lasts for four weeks.
– But without knowing what is in the document I signed, I do not feel it is safe enough to travel back to Qatar, says the NRK journalist to VG.
He had to sign a document to be released from detention in Doha last November. The document was written in Arabic.
– Then and there we felt we had no choice but to sign. Since December we have been trying to get a document, but previously we have not succeeded.
– To what extent do you experience it as unpleasant?
Ekeland says that the journalist in him wants to return to Qatar and the World Cup to complete the work he started.
– But at the same time it must be experienced as one hundred percent safe. Despite the assurances from FIFA, it has always been a prerequisite that I have to see my police documents. When I have no idea what it says in that document, I don’t know what I might risk by traveling to cover the WC, he says to VG.
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– How would you describe the dialogue with the authorities in Qatar?
– Not existing. I have not heard anything from either the authorities in Qatar, the embassy in Stockholm or anyone else in Qatar since before the summer. This despite the fact that I have tried to reach them several times, says Ekeland.
I then press release last year the Qatari authorities wrote that the reason the journalists were arrested was that they entered private territory and filmed without permission.
The authorities claimed that the NRK journalists were arrested at the hotel after a complaint was received from the landowner of the area where, according to Qatari authorities, the NRK journalists must have entered.
– Qatar has welcomed hundreds of international journalists every year to report in the country. No journalists have ever been detained when the laws in Qatar have been respected.
On Reporters Without Borders’ ranking of press freedom in 180 different countries, Qatar is in 128th place.
The incident took place a year before the football World Cup in Qatar, and has provoked strong reactions among politicians, human rights activists and sports figures in Norway.
VG met Ghorbani and Ekeland both at the airport in Copenhagen and upon landing at Gardermoeni last year.
Both expressed that it had been uncomfortable:
– It is not good. It has been awful, Ghorbani told VG.
Halvor Ekeland has not been to Qatar since his arrest last year.
– Ultimately, what are you afraid of?
– In the extreme, I may have signed a confession. FIFA says they have received assurances from the Qatari authorities that I have not signed anything that will prevent me from my work or that I risk legal action. But FIFA also promised freedom of the press before I went down to Qatar last time, says Ekeland to VG today.