\n<\/p>\n
Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> Players often face fines and bans from FIFA for displaying political messages, as the football governing body has long proclaimed a policy of political neutrality.<\/p>\n But on Friday, the association\u2019s chief Gianni Infantino handed United States President Donald Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, further cementing his embrace of the Republican leader.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Critics pointed out that the award came\u00a0less than 24 hours after the Trump administration carried out another deadly air strike in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n Craig Mokhiber, a former United Nations official who has campaigned to suspend Israel from world football over its genocidal war in Gaza, called the award to Trump a \u201ctruly shameful development\u201d.<\/p>\n Infantino has refused to take action against Israel, arguing that football \u201ccannot solve geopolitical\u201d issues.<\/p>\n \u201cNot satisfied with two years of FIFA complicity in genocide in Palestine, Infantino and his cronies have now invented a new \u2018peace prize\u2019 in order to curry favour with Donald Trump,\u201d Mokhiber told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n He added that the award also aims to \u201cobscure\u201d Trump\u2019s \u201cdisgraceful record\u201d of support to Israel, his deadly strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea, and \u201cgross violations of human rights\u201d inside the US.<\/p>\n While presenting the prize on Friday, Infantino expressed support for Trump\u2019s international deals, including the so-called Abraham Accords that established formal ties between Israel and several Arab states without resolving the question of Palestinian statehood.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what we want from a leader: a leader that cares about the people. We want to live in a safe world, in a safe environment. We want to unite, and that\u2019s what we do here today, and that\u2019s what we want to do at the World Cup,\u201d Infantino said as he presented the award.<\/p>\n \u201cMr President, you definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way, but you have obtained in an incredible way.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has openly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize but missed out on the award earlier this year.<\/p>\n He said the new FIFA recognition is one of the \u201cgreat honours\u201d he has received, and he repeated his claim that his presidency has saved millions of lives and ended eight wars.<\/p>\n The US president\u2019s remarks were brief, but he still could not help but take a shot at the record of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States, one year ago, was not doing too well, and now I have to say we\u2019re the hottest country anywhere in the world,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n Infantino has previously warned against using football to stoke division. \u201cThere\u2019s no more powerful tool than sport to unite the people,\u201d he said in 2023. \u201cNow we have to protect the autonomy of sport: the political neutrality of sport and to protect the values of sport.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, critics point out that Infantino has created a prize to celebrate peace and unity, and then handed it to a president who called people from Somalia \u201cgarbage\u201d just days prior.<\/p>\n \u201cGiving Donald Trump a prize for peace is like giving Luis Suarez a prize for not biting people\u2019s ears off,\u201d football journalist Zach Lowy wrote on social media, referring to the Uruguayan forward who has been caught up in at least three biting incidents on the pitch throughout his career.<\/p>\n Infantino appears to have forged strong ties with Trump as the US prepares to co-host the World Cup with Mexico and Canada next year.<\/p>\n The FIFA president has been a regular guest at the White House, and in October, he attended a ceremony with Trump to formalise the Gaza truce in Egypt.<\/p>\n FIFA did not respond to Al Jazeera\u2019s request for comment by the time of publication.<\/p>\n The Democratic Party was among the critics taking aim at the new FIFA award. \u201cTrump couldn\u2019t win a Nobel Peace Prize so FIFA made one up for him,\u201d it said in a social media post.<\/p>\n But rights advocates levelled more serious criticism at the US president, invoking his rights record and foreign policy.<\/p>\n While Trump has helped broker some peace deals between warring parties, most recently between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he has been an advocate for increased military spending across the Western world.<\/p>\n Trump also ordered the bombing of Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities in June, and he has continued to arm Israel despite its well-documented abuses against Palestinians.<\/p>\n In the Western Hemisphere, Trump\u2019s administration has also carried out 22 air strikes against vessels that it says are carrying drugs, killing at least 86 people. Legal experts have widely condemned the attacks as unlawful acts of extrajudicial killing.<\/p>\n Moreover, Trump has been amassing military assets near Venezuela, raising speculation that the US may go to war with the country to topple left-wing President Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n At home, Trump has intensified an anti-immigration crackdown that has led to the detention and attempted deportation of non-citizens. Some advocates have been targeted for their criticism of Israel, an act of free speech protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.<\/p>\n \u201cUS President Donald Trump was just awarded the newly created \u2018FIFA Peace Prize\u2019,\u201d Human Rights Watch said on the social media platform X.<\/p>\n \u201cBut his administration\u2019s appalling human rights record certainly does not display \u2018exceptional actions for peace and unity\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Mokhiber, the former UN official, said the \u201cvulgar\u201d prize to Trump must be rescinded.<\/p>\n \u201cFIFA rules do not allow play on a muddy pitch. They certainly shouldn\u2019t play on a bloody pitch. But that\u2019s precisely where Infantino is leading FIFA,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Washington, DC \u2013 Players often face fines and bans from FIFA for displaying political messages, as the football governing body has long proclaimed a policy of political neutrality. But on Friday, the association\u2019s chief Gianni Infantino handed United States President Donald Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, further cementing his embrace of the Republican leader. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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