Qatar is exploiting  South Asian migrant labour (almost a million of them from India and Nepal) who are building the infrastructure for the 2022 soccer World Cup . Activists say that labour abuses are widespread throughout the Gulf, and that the workers’ home countries share the blame.

Mr Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, visited Doha in early June, and is understood to have raised concerns over working conditions with Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, Qatar’s authoritarian ruler. After Modi’s tour, the latest of a series of reports published by Amnesty International claim that almost all of some 200 labourers it interviewed on two World Cup-related construction sites in Doha were being exploited by their employers.

Most international attention has focused on World Cup construction sites in Qatar, where South Asian workers provide much of the labour force. There are about 630,000 Indians, and more than 400,000 Nepalese. However, activists say that similar problems are rife in other Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, and in Malaysia.

Amnesty’s reports said that workers in Qatar are made to live in squalid conditions, their passports are confiscated, their wages are delayed or withheld and they are not provided with identity documents needed to avoid arrest if seen outside the workplace. Qatar, which disputes Amnesty’s claims, assured Prime Minister Modi that conditions for workers would be improved, and released 23 Indians serving prison sentences shortly after he left.

Qatar is neither the top Gulf destination for South Asian migrant workers, nor the worst alleged violator of their rights.

Indian embassies received more than 7,000 labour complaints from Gulf countries in the 11 months to November 2015, mostly from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told parliament in New Delhi in December.

Indian human rights activist Kundan Srivastava, told a journalist that he had “recently rescued four migrant workers from Saudi Arabia without any help from the Indian government.” Another migrant, Abdul Sattar Makandar, an Indian worker in Saudi Arabia, appears on a video posted on YouTube by Srivastava, complaining of harassment by his employer and seeking help to return to India.

Construction worker Ramesh, whose name has been changed, told Amnesty International how the system makes it harder for workers to stand up for their rights:

“I went to my manager’s office and told him I want to go home because my pay is always late. The manager screamed at me, saying ‘keep working or you will never leave!’”

“Under the kafala system it is all too easy for an unscrupulous employer to get away with the late payment of salaries, housing workers in squalid and cramped housing, or threatening workers who complain about their conditions. That is why kafala requires a major overhaul, not just tinkering at the edges,” said Mustafa Qadri of Amnesty, “Migrant workers continue to face impediments and delays in accessing the justice system, and are not allowed to form or join unions. Many thousands still struggle to obtain adequate health and other basic services, face delays in obtaining their resident permits, or live and work in intolerable conditions.”

Many migrant workers never return home. Vijay Kumar Singh, India’s minister of state for external affairs, said in parliament in May that 5,875 Indian workers died in Gulf countries in 2015.

  Amnesty, India, Prime Minister Modi, workers