Virtue or signalling? World Cup protests get mixed reaction

DUBAI: Human rights protests at the World Cup have drawn everything from sympathy to indifference and outright hostility, with Qatar's critics often finding themselves in the firing line.

Germany's hands-over-mouths protest, a reaction to being barred from wearing a "OneLove" armband, was swiftly followed by accusations of anti-Arab racism and taunts over the country's Nazi past.

Other acts of support for Qatar's LGBTQ community and migrant workers, often by European teams or fans, have prompted more suspicion than solidarity from many around the world.

"Put your hands over your mouths and we will pinch our noses so we don't smell your racism," Tunisian national Fathi Jouini said in a post on Facebook, referring to the German team.

Similar attitudes were seen elsewhere, with many lashing out angrily. In conservative Saudi Arabia, an Arabic hashtag that translates as "the gay team" trended on Twitter after the German protest.

The highly charged, often offensive exchanges on social media follow a bad-tempered build-up to the World Cup, when European officials and media led criticism of Qatar's rights record.

According to Dana El Kurd, assistant professor of political science at the University of Richmond in Virginia, critics of the tournament are sometimes guilty of "double standards".

"The discussion around Qatar's World Cup -- while sometimes bringing up absolutely correct and valid critiques - has also been motivated by hypocrisy and double standards in many cases," she told AFP.

"I think it would be an omission if we didn't recognise that racism plays a large part," El Kurd said.

"They just see a country of Arabs in thobes (robes) and assume some extremist religious autocracy, when in reality people behave quite freely in Doha