UAE, Saudi harass Qatari sports channel

A member of the administrative delegation of the UAE’s football team – which was beaten by Iraq and failed to reach next year’s world cup in Russia – removed beIN Sport’s microphone during a press conference with the UAE’s coach Edgardo Bauza, the New Khalij said yesterday.

Since the start of the blockade on Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other countries taking part in the siege have harassed the Qatar’s sports channel beIN.

These countries have already shut down the leading Qatari news channel Al Jazeera since the start of the siege, but could not block beIN because it has the right to exclusive coverage of several tournaments that included the blockade countries.

Read: Kuwait hands head of new Al-Jazeera channel to Saudi Arabia

However, correspondents of beIN Sport have been subject for harassment by the blockade countries.

In one of the cases, a Saudi TV channel violated the exclusive right of Qatari TV to cover one of the football tournaments, the New Khalij said.

#QatarGate

When the UAE team member removed the microphone of beIN Sport during the press conference, the correspondent Mohamed Lajbour returned it, stressing that his channel has the exclusive right to cover the full tournament.

The Saudi opposition politician Kassab Al-Otaibe criticised this act on his twitter and described it as “childish”.