Portland Communications, Qatar’s tool to conceal its terrorism

CAIRO-12 July 2017: Qatar is spending fortunes to evade the current political crisis with four Arab nations who cut off diplomatic relations with the tiny emirate, accusing it of funding terrorism and adopting policies destabilizing the region.

The London-based Public Relation agency “Portland Communications” found itself tasked again to amend the emirate’s cracked relations with states on both regional and international level.

The PR agency started to use vehicles lifting huge banners that say, “Lift the Blockade against the people of Qatar”, to have them roaming the British capital streets.

Qatar resorted to the PR agency amid rising tension with neighboring countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain who imposed a travel and trade boycott on the tiny emirate after it has refused to meet the four nations’ demands of cutting ties with terrorist organizations.

The British agency has been hired to improve the Qatari image since 2013; it came under the service of Qatar after the Gulf state was accused of conducting money-laundering operations through shady businesses.

In 2014, Portland Communications was the corner stone of Qatar’s campaign to refute accusations that the emirate abuses Asian labor, the Migrant workers on Qatar 2022 World Cup construction sites who have suffered inhuman living standards.

Abusing Asian workers in Qatar dragged the attention of several media organizations, such as the BBC whose team of reporters assigned to follow the story was detained by Qatari authorities in 2015; also the Gulf state was condemned by International organizations such as AMNESTY.

Before that, Portland sought to drive out allegations of corruption against the Qatari bid to win hosting World Cup 2022.

Portland was founded by Tim Allan, a former senior adviser to Tony Blair, and is now majority-owned by US marketing services company Omnicom.




Portland Communications' campaigning for Qatar boycott lift - Twitter image