Two British men working with a human rights organization went missing in Doha while investigating the deplorable working conditions of foreign workers building Qatar’s 2022 World Cup venues have gone missing.  Relatives are worried that they may have been captured by police and are being tortured.

“We are aware of reports that two British nationals have been detained in Qatar and we are investigating,” said a spokesperson for the British embassy in Doha.

52-year old Krishna Upadhyaya and 36-year old Gundev Ghimire work for Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD).  They disappeared in the Qatari capital after complaints they had been followed by police, and shortly after the GNRD had advised them to leave the country.

“Their whereabouts remain undisclosed by Qatari authorities despite repeated efforts by GNRD, and their families, to obtain their location,” the organization said in a statement.  “GNRD is deeply concerned that these employees, both British citizens, may have been subjected to enforced disappearance and are currently at risk of torture.”

Qatar is a wealthy oil state, and citizens pretty much don’t do any work for themselves.  The foreign workers brought in are bound to their employers in something called the “Kalafa system”: Their passports are confiscated, they are crammed into teeming dorms, they are forced to work extraordinarily long days in the blazing Arabian Peninsula heat for as little as 45 cents per hour.

Earlier this year, Qatar admitted that World Cup workers were dieing at a rate of more than one per day, many of “sudden cardiac death”, falls, and suicide.