‘Huawei employees helped African regimes spy on opponents’

Employees of the Chinese manufacturer Huawei have helped African regimes to spy on political opponents in two cases. That reports The Wall Street Journal. That happened in Zambia and Uganda.

In Zambia, Huawei employees helped track down and have bloggers arrested, while in Uganda Huawei employees accessed WhatsApp chats of a political opponent of the president in order to have him and supporters arrested, The Wall Street Journal reports. .

The business paper relies on testimonials from government employees and an internal report about one of the cases it got its hands on. The Zambian ruling party Patriotic Front also posted on Facebook a few months ago about the arrest of the bloggers and Huawei’s cooperation.

The American newspaper emphasizes that this concerns assistance in individual cases and not espionage on behalf of the Chinese government or using technology that has been placed in Huawei network equipment for this purpose.

Huawei denies to the newspaper that employees have helped to arrest opponents. Uganda’s government confirms that Huawei is helping them track down political opponents. Since the newspaper started asking questions, Huawei employees are said to have stopped appearing during briefings.