Following revelations from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei about assisting the Chinese government in developing a face recognition system for Uyghurs, among other things, French soccer star Griezmann announced the immediate end of his partnership with Huawei. It is no coincidence that Sweden’s Olympic gold medal swimmer Jostrom also made it clear this Friday that he is terminating his partnership with Huawei.
Antoine Griezmann, the French men’s national soccer team player and La Liga Barcelona star, was upset that Chinese telecom giant Huawei helped the Beijing government monitor Uighurs with facial recognition software, and announced on social media sites on the 10th that he was ending his partnership with Huawei immediately.
Griezmann, who led the French national team to the 2018 World Cup title, has a huge fan base. He took the Huawei endorsement job in April 2017 as the brand’s global ambassador.
Griezmann strongly suspects Huawei of using facial recognition systems to enable the development of Uyghur alerts and therefore announced the immediate termination of his relationship with Huawei. He also called on Huawei, instead of just one-sidedly denying the accusations, to take concrete action as soon as possible to denounce this massive crackdown on Uyghurs in Beijing and to use Huawei’s corporate clout to speak out for human and women’s rights.
Griezmann was motivated by reading news revealed by the Washington Post that Huawei has been working with Beijing-based Kuangwei Technology (Megvii), which specializes in facial recognition technology, since 2018 to develop artificial intelligence camera systems that can identify the age, gender and race of their targets. The most controversial part of the partnership is a face recognition system called the Uyghur Alert Mechanism, which immediately notifies Chinese public security when it detects the face of a Uyghur in a crowd. Huawei and Kuangwei both admitted that the test reports were true, but denied targeting specific ethnic groups.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, “I think an independent organization who it wants to work with, that’s their business. We can’t, and I don’t want to make any comments.”
Not coincidentally, Sarah Sjöström, Sweden’s Olympic gold medal swimming star, also confirmed on the 11th that it was terminating its cooperation with Huawei, with both parties agreeing not to extend the agreement. Since March 2019, Sjöström (who began working with Huawei when she shot a Huawei cell phone commercial alongside Swedish pop diva Zara Larsson) has chosen to end her partnership with Huawei in August, while Sjöström continues to endorse it.
In an interview with Swedish channel TV4 in August, Zara Larsson admitted that, looking back, professionally and personally, it wasn’t the smartest deal she ever made. Everyone who knows me knows that I have always been on the side of human rights,” she said. Even though Huawei has always said it has no ties to the Chinese government, that in itself is hard to prove. We know that the Chinese government is not a benevolent government, and I don’t want to support what they are doing.” She also said she would have liked to speak out for Uyghur issues, TikTok, the international version of Jitterbug, and Hong Kong, but felt herself hindered by her work with Huawei.
Griezmann is not the first international-level star to take a public stand over the treatment of Uyghurs. Late last year, English Premier League team Arsenal and former German international Mesut Özil described Uighurs as “fighters against oppression” and criticized China and all those who remain silent about the mistreatment. China’s state-run television station then canceled the Arsenal team’s matches and removed Özil from the Chinese version of the video game Pro Evolution Soccer.
Recent Comments