Soccer Star Antoine Griezmann Ends Partnership With Huawei

Chinese Huawei encounters many problems since several years in USA to sell its excellent storage systems as many American companies do not want to store their critical data on Chinese company’s products. Most recently it was also criticized to try to be a monopole in 5G technology and trade sanctions were imposed by the US government on this business.

Last event does not improve the image of the giant company.

French soccer star Antoine Griezmann, 29, has publicly decided to end his affiliation with Huawei, saying there are “strong suspicions” that it has contributed to the repression of the mostly Muslim minority Uighurs. Griezmann was a global brand ambassador for Huawei and appeared in advertisements promoting the company’s smartphones.

Uyghurs are recognized by the Chinese government only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation.

World champion in 2018, soccer attacker Griezmann, also nicknamed Grizi, Grizou or Petit Prince, is regularly selected in the French national team for the the quality of his passes and kicks. He played for Atletico Madrid and then was traded to Futbol Club Barcelona in 2019 for $145.5 million to play with Lionel Messi.

More precisely, the facial recognition software based on AI came from $4 billion Chinese for Megvii, being in the operation a contract subcontractor of Huawei delivering on its side servers, storage, network equipment, cloud video platform, etc. China had 349 million surveillance cameras installed as of 2018, nearly 5x the number in USA.

Have you ever heard about the Uyghurs?

According to Wikipedia, they are a Turkic ethnic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the general region of Central and East Asia. They are recognized by the Chinese government only as a regional minority within a multicultural nation. The Chinese government rejects the notion of the Uyghurs being an indigenous group.An estimated 80% of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs still live in the Tarim Basin. The rest of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs mostly live in Ürümqi, the capital city of Xinjiang UAR, which is located in the historical region of Dzungaria. Since 2015, it has been estimated that over a million Uyghurs have been detained in Xinjiang re-education camps. The camps were established under General Secretary Xi Jinping’s administration with the main goal of ensuring adherence to national ideology. The Chinese government maintains its actions in Xinjiang as justifiable responses to a threat of extremism due to the East Turkestan independence movement and resulting frequent terrorist attacks.