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The soccer world champion terminates his contract with the Chinese corporation on human rights grounds. A risky company, as the past has shown.
He doesn’t want to play with Huawei: Barcelona striker Antoine Griezmann.
Photograph: Getty Images / David S. Bustamante
Recently, Antoine Griezmann said that he doesn’t really like talking off the field. After several rumors about his relationship with Barcelona’s best dog, Lionel Messi, he was forced to make himself clear next to the soccer field. And it helped: then he scored three goals in the next three games and prepared another.
“Maybe I should do an interview like that every week,” coach Ronald Koeman joked afterward. Well, from that point of view he would have to score hat trick after hat trick in the next few games. Because once again Griezmann expressed himself outside the football field. And this time it is an important issue. This time it is a matter of life and death.
The 29-year-old attacker reacted to reports that Huawei was involved in China’s state oppression of the Muslim minority. The human rights organization Human Rights Watch accuses the telecommunications industry group of developing a program to expand surveillance of Uighur Muslims in China. Accordingly, the video evaluation software should also be able to assign faces to ethnic groups, so that the authorities can be informed about members of the minority through a “Uyghur alarm”.
Griezmann reacted impressively: through an Instagram post, he announced the immediate termination of his advertising contract with Huawei. “I take this opportunity to invite Huawei not only to deny the accusations, but to take action as soon as possible to act against this massive repression and use its influence so that human rights are respected in our society,” the 2018 world champion wrote. And it received approval from many of its 30 million subscribers.
Ozil as a chilling example
The enthusiasm of his patron Barcelona remains to be seen. After all, the best clubs consider the Chinese market lucrative enough to avoid problems there. Mesut Özil and Arsenal learned a year ago how sensitive China is to reacting to criticism from abroad.
After the former German national player denounced the persecution of the Uighurs several times, the reaction occurred immediately: Özil was removed from a famous video game and his account on the Chinese social media portal Weibo was deactivated. Y: State television canceled the broadcast of Arsenal’s game against Manchester City. Whereupon Arsenal kissed and publicly from Özil’s words estranged. In the meantime, he has even been removed from the London club’s squad, officially due to underperformance.
