French men’s national soccer team player and La Liga Barcelona FC star Antoine Griezmann announced on Dec. 10 via his personal Instagram account that he was immediately ending his partnership with Chinese communications giant Huawei. The announcement comes after the Washington Post cited a Pennsylvania-based company called IPVM, which reviews and investigates video surveillance equipment, as disclosing Huawei’s alleged involvement in a face recognition program for Uighurs.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the newspaper, with the help of the research firm IPVM, obtained relevant project information from Huawei’s website and found that Huawei had indeed cooperated with Beijing Kuangwei Technology Co. The test report documented that Huawei worked with Kuangvision in 2018 to test an artificial intelligence camera system that could scan faces, estimate the age, gender and race of each person, and trigger a “Uighur alert” if the face of a Uighur was detected, potentially alerting the Chinese police. The report said that the test report was a result of the Uyghur test.
The test report was found on Huawei’s website, but was removed shortly after the Washington Post and IPVM asked the company for comment, according to the report. However, both Huawei and Kuangwei Technology Group acknowledged that the document was authentic.
In response, Griezmann sent out a statement in white on black on his Instagram account Thursday. The statement reads, “After strongly suspecting that Huawei used facial recognition software to enable the development of ‘Uyghur Alert,’ I am announcing the immediate termination of my cooperation with the company.” He also invited Huawei to “take concrete action as soon as possible to denounce this massive repression and use its influence to promote respect for human and women’s rights in society.”
Griezmann, who previously played for Atletico Madrid in La Liga, became a global brand ambassador for Huawei in April 2017 and has since endorsed the P10 phone and other products, according to the news release.
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