This man was desperate. So desperate, in fact, that he left his home in Pakistan, paying a recruiting agent to set him up with employment in Qatar. He borrowed most of the sum required—17,000 Qatari riyal, or roughly $4,700—from relatives and friends. But after asking and begging everyone he knew, he still didn’t have enough. So he sold his grandmother’s wedding ring at a pawn shop and left for Doha in advance of the biggest tournament in sports, which unfolded last November and December.

Upon arrival, he settled into housing provided by the company that hired him and the five other security guards who spoke to Sports Illustrated, a private firm, Stark Security Services. He says his contract dictated things like length of employment (six months, same for all six) and salary (2,700 QAR, or about $750, per month with some variance across the sampling of six). Why Stark offered contracts that ran longer than the tournament, none of them can say. But human rights advocates can guess that the lengths were essentially incentives; likely grounded, one says, in exploitation.

The man in the video found the Stark-provided room and board decent, and, overall, he liked the work; in his case, body-scanning journalists with metal-detecting wands at the Main Media Centre (MMC). This was the World Cup, after all; excitement, travelers, purpose, connection. He became one small but not insignificant piece of an awe-inspiring global event...

Initially, the men say, Stark officials seemed intent on utilizing indirect pressure. The Wi-Fi went out, so the guards couldn’t call home, speak with family or look for other jobs. They say their minders also stopped feeding them, as their contracts required. Stark stopped providing even water for their apartments, they say. After all this, some did leave, and, worse yet, they say they could depart only after signing paperwork that said they had finished their contracts and that Stark no longer owed them money, according to multiple guards, as well as Nemerovski. But many, like the man in the video, still remained...

[The Resource Centre has previously invited response from Stark Security regarding its treatment of workers during the Qatar World Cup.]