The France international has immediately terminated the partnership
Antoine Griezmann has announced that he is to end his long-running sponsorship deal with Huawei after the Chinese telecom giant was allegedly involved in the surveillance of Uighur Muslims.
A report released earlier in the week by IPVM, a surveillance research company based in the United States, claimed Huawei had been involved in the testing of facial recognition technology in China which could be used to send alerts to police when Uighur faces are detected.
In a statement posted to his Instagram account, the Barcelona forward said he was ending the partnership with immediate effect.
‘Due to 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.’ the statement said.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CInqQ5-ptdP/
Griezmann is not the only high-profile footballer to speak out on the matter. Earlier in the year, former Newcastle and Chelsea striker Demba Ba called on football to condemn China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims in an interview with the BBC.
“The Black Lives Matter movement is stronger when non-black people step up for it,” Ba said. “When are we going to see the rest of the world stand up for Muslims?”
His comments came after more than a million Uighur were believed to have been detained in prison camps on the basis of their faith and ethnicity. Reports earlier in the year also claimed children were being separated from their parents in the western region of Xinjiang, home to China’s largest Uighur population.Â
