Barcelona's Antoine Griezmann ends Huawei deal over alleged Uighur surveillance in China

French football player Antoine Griezmann ended his affiliation with Huawei on Thursday, saying there are “strong suspicions” that the Chinese tech giant has contributed to the repression of the Uighur Muslims. The 29-year-old Barcelona forward's announcement followed media reports that Huawei has tested facial recognition software intended to help China's surveillance of the group, according to the Associated Press.

'I take this opportunity to invite Huawei...'

"Following strong suspicions that the Huawei company has contributed to the development of a ‘Uighur alert’ thanks to facial recognition software, I am announcing the immediate termination of my partnership with the company," Griezmann said in an Instagram post.

"I take this opportunity to invite Huawei to not just deny these accusations," he said, "but to take concrete actions as quickly as possible to condemn this mass repression, and to use its influence to contribute to the respect of human and women's rights in society."

China's crackdown on Uighurs

Griezmann was a global brand ambassador for Huawei and has appeared in advertisements promoting the company's smartphones. An AP investigation found that the Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.

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Huawei, China’s first global tech brand and the biggest maker of switching equipment used by phone and internet companies, is at the centre of U.S.-Chinese tension over technology, security and spying. Since 2016, China has detained up to 1 million Uighurs - who are native to Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwest China - in internment camps, centres that the government has called "reeducation camps." Officials at the camps force the Uighurs to abandon their culture and adopt Chinese customs, like learning the Mandarin language.

According to media reports, the Chinese government has already been using high-tech surveillance tools to monitor Uighurs, including installing hundreds of thousands of cameras in Xinjiang to identify them and spying on them through their phones. Several international human rights activists and nations have condemned China's actions. 

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(With agency inputs)