Antoine Griezmann on Thursday announced on Instagram that he was ending his collaboration with Huawei. The Chinese giant is accused of participating in the surveillance and repression of the Uighur minority in China, according to revelations on the Washington Post and IPVM.
The world champion invites the company to take concrete action as quickly as possible to condemn this mass repression.
“Following strong suspicions that Huawei has contributed to the development of a ‘Uighurs alert’ through the use of facial recognition software, I am immediately ending my partnership with the company.” Griezmann said on Instagram
Griezmann, who was one of the leading members of the France team that won the 2018 World Cup in Russia, has been a Huawei brand ambassador since 2017.
Telecom giant Huawei has been singled out in the United States for being involved in testing such detection software, according to research firm IPVM.
An internal report from the Chinese group (removed from Huawei’s website but still available on the internet) indicated that this facial recognition software was in the testing phase to provide “alerts to the presence of Uyghurs” and made it possible to recognise “age, sex, ethnicity”.
The United States-based human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday said in a report that Muslims were arrested in northwest China’s Xinjiang region after being reported by software that identifies suspicious behavior.
The Uyghurs are the main ethnic group in Xinjiang, a huge region of China which notably has common borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Griezmann made his name with Real Sociedad in Spain before moving to Atletico Madrid in 2014. He joined Barcelona in a €120m deal in 2019 and is expected to be part of the French squad for next year’s European championships.
