Blues star Antoine Griezmann has ended his partnership with Huawei, over "suspicion" of the telecoms giant's participation in monitoring the Uyghur minority in China.
The company is suspected of having set up facial recognition software in particular to spot Uyghurs.
French footballer Antoine Griezmann announced Thursday that he was putting "an immediate end to (his) partnership" with Huawei, citing "strong suspicions" about the participation of the Chinese telecoms giant in the surveillance of the Uyghur Muslim minority by the authorities Chinese.
"Following strong suspicions that the Huawei company has contributed to the development of a 'Uyghur alert' thanks to facial recognition software, I announce that I am putting an immediate end to my partnership linking me to this company", writes the Barcelona and France team striker, who had a contract as a brand ambassador since 2017.
The 2018 world champion calls on "Huawei not to just deny these accusations but to take concrete actions as quickly as possible to condemn this mass repression of" the Uyghur minority "and to use its influence to contribute to respect for human rights. Man and Woman in society ".
See this post on Instagram
A post shared by Antoine Griezmann (@antogriezmann)
Huawei suspected of having implemented facial recognition software to spot Uyghurs
Chinese companies have been accused in the past of having implemented facial recognition software to identify people of Uyghur appearance.
Again on Tuesday, the telecoms giant Huawei was singled out in the United States for having been 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 recognize "age, sex, ethnicity".
The US-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.