On Sunday we uploaded an interview with Yasin Kakande wherein we stepped in and offered paraphrased narration because we thought that the audio quality of his side of the conversation made it difficult to follow. However, having listened to the conversation with earbuds we find Kakande’s answers comes through clearly and this week we're uploading the full conversation, a conversations we’d shortened because of the time required to edit in the narration.

Kakande is a former journalist for the newspaper the National out of Dubai, a news producer for City 7 TV in Dubai, and a former reporter and assistant editor for the Bahrain Tribune. His book Slave States is out from Zero Books this month. It is an exposé of the Kafala system.

Kafala is a sponsorship system used to monitor migrant workers in the Gulf Arab Region. Kafala requires that a migrant worker’s employer acts as his or her sponsor. It puts the employer in charge of most aspects of a migrant workers life. The human rights organization Amnesty International has documented many human rights abuses by Kafala employers. At a FIFA hearing in July of this year, AIUSA Advocacy Director Sunjeev Bery testified against Kafala. He reported that “The Kafala sponsorship system is a recipe for worker abuse.” The concern was raised in regards to the migrant workers preparing for the FIFA World Cup in 2022. Bery said that “As a first step, Qatar must abolish the inherently abusive policies that give employers the power to decide whether a worker can leave the country or take another job.”