“A night marked by terror, aggression, pushing and sexual harassment.” This is how one woman described her experience at the FIFA Fan Fest in Doha, Qatar.

Journalist Diego Garcia of Portal UOL spoke to a foreign woman living in Qatar. According to her, the events took place on the second day of the event.

Tents holding World Cup fan fests – Photo: Reproduction/Internet/ND

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“I lived the worst night of my life at the Doha Fan Fest. I won’t step on him again. I hope tragedy doesn’t happen. I just cried all night. It felt like I was being attacked by animals.

The confusion begins on the tarp where people are waiting for the opening of the Fan Fest. It’s hard to even be there. There is a large mass of people and most of them are men. I know that at the World Championships the audience is more male, the only women I saw were with families or husbands. They started pushing and squeezing everyone, and I thought that was the worst thing that could happen that night.

When they opened the tarp, people started pushing each other and the nightmare began. Surrounded by people, everyone pushes each other, elbows each other, you try to protect yourself so as not to get hurt, but these are bigger people, most of them are men, and you are in the middle. I could say that if you were in a group it would be better, but the friends in the group have drifted apart in this mess and you can’t hold on to each other.

People started pushing me, and the nightmare that I thought was about to end intensified. We know that Qatar is a very safe country and people are very depressed, but at that moment the men around me felt protected by the crowd. I began to feel hands on me, on every part of my body. I started to panic. I never thought this would happen to me. I just heard that Qatar is safe, and you come here with a different attitude, thinking that this does not happen here.

Then I started crying. I was already led and pushed to the x-ray, but the crowd did not obey the x-ray. He pushed everything, overturned tables, chairs. The X-ray swayed, almost toppled over, and everyone was pushing, hundreds of people. The policeman saw that I was in such a state. I don’t know if he saw what was happening, but he pulled me out and put me in a corner, he made me a barrier, but he couldn’t hold back the rest of the people, he had a place where he could take care of.

So I gave up because I saw that there was nothing more he could do for me. He asked me what happened and I said that in the middle of the crowd people started touching me. He showed no reaction. I don’t know if he was shocked or if he just had nothing to say.

As a result, he ended up on the fence, we moved to a more open lawn and told everyone to sit on the ground. They shouted “sit down now”. I didn’t go, but the policewoman pushed me to sit down, everyone sat on the floor, it was bad. I cried.

When bullying happened, I tried to turn around, tried to see who was doing it, who was touching me. There was no way to know. I don’t know if it was one or five people. There were so many people there that you don’t know where you came from. I thought the worst thing that could happen to me is that my wallet is pulled out, but no. I’d rather lose my wallet a thousand times over.

I have heard from others who have seen mothers with children being pushed. There were people who tried to protect their wife and child and failed. People refuse to stay there because it was cruel. People are screaming that it’s dangerous. There was nothing that could hold these people. I will never set foot in the fan zone again, I do not recommend it to anyone. I only have bad memories of that night,” he said.