Round 200 circumstances have been filed in opposition to Yunus since Sheikh Hasina first turned Bangladesh’s prime minister in 2009, largely for allegedly violating labour legal guidelines and embezzling funds from a few of the greater than 50 social enterprise corporations that he had arrange within the nation.
Supporters of Yunus allege that the circumstances mark a marketing campaign by Bangladeshi authorities to harass and vilify the economist, one of many nation’s most high-profile figures and a bitter and long-time rival of Hasina.
![Bangladeshi Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus (centre) appears in a court in Dhaka on January 1. Photo: AFP](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/1a575d55-9e61-4a31-b016-02e348f82220_54f02639.jpg)
In January, Yunus was sentenced to 6 months in jail for violating labour legal guidelines at Grameen Telecom which along with Norway’s state-owned Telenor is a shareholder in Bangladesh’s largest cell operator Grameenphone. However he stays out on bail pending additional proceedings.
Apart from the embezzling case, Yunus has been accused of 200 different costs, every of which he has denied.
In an earlier assertion, Yunus defiantly stated: “I name for the Bangladeshi individuals to talk in a single voice in opposition to injustice and in favour of democracy and human rights for every one among our residents.”
After a June 12 indictment listening to the place he pleaded not responsible, Yunus waved to journalists and instructed them he was confined in “an iron cage” throughout the courtroom continuing and that he was going through harassment by the federal government.
“This can be a humiliation for me – an harmless particular person should stand inside an iron cage throughout the entire listening to time! That is an abominable follow,” he stated, demanding that the availability be reviewed.
A number of international leaders and social activists have criticised Hasina’s remedy of Yunus, accusing her authorities of harassing him as she sees him as a “political menace”.
In 2007, the celebrated economist had expressed his need to kind Residents’ Energy, a political celebration meant to battle corruption and polarisation, a plan – later dropped – that was seen as having positioned him within the cross hairs of Hasina, who, when she took energy, launched a string of investigations in opposition to him.
Yunus’ Nobel Prize win for his work with the Grameen Financial institution that promoted “financial and social improvement from beneath” earned him assist from the worldwide group.
It was not lengthy earlier than he overtly started criticising Hasina’s regime, leading to her calling the economist a “bloodsucker of the poor” and accusing him of charging exceptionally excessive rates of interest via Grameen Financial institution.
![Sheikh Hasina speaks during a meeting with foreign observers and journalists at the prime minister’s residence in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in January. Photo: Reuters](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/36529a35-8aa4-47b1-aaa9-f6baa4569605_015cf37b.jpg)
Yunus denied Hasina’s allegations, drawing a distinction between “proper microcredit” and “fallacious microcredit”, stating that microcredit have to be used for social improvement and to not make income.
In August final yr, over 170 international leaders, together with greater than 100 Nobel laureates, former US president Barack Obama and Turkish creator Orhan Pamuk, in an open letter claimed that Yunus was being earmarked due to Hasina’s qualms with him. They additional urged the federal government to place an finish to the authorized proceedings in opposition to Yunus.
“We’re alarmed that he has not too long ago been focused by what we consider to be steady judicial harassment,” the letter, which was addressed to Hasina and revealed within the worldwide version of The New York Instances as a full-page advert, learn.
“We’re assured that any thorough evaluate of the anti-corruption and labor regulation circumstances in opposition to him will lead to his acquittal.”
The Hasina authorities has since denied these allegations.
After the present of assist from world leaders for Yunus, Hasina accused the professor of “begging” for a world assertion and stated she would welcome worldwide consultants to evaluate the authorized proceedings in opposition to Yunus.
A political menace?
Bangladeshi girls’s rights activist Farida Akhter instructed This Week in Asia that the worldwide recognition the economist had obtained threatened Hasina’s regime ought to he flip right into a political determine and champion the trigger in opposition to what some perceived as a “corrupt and oppressive” rule.
“Maybe the regime feels challenged by his concepts since they increase well-liked issues about governance, social equality, and administration of the economic system that have to be oriented to serve the poor and the downtrodden,” she stated.
![A Bangladeshi street vendor sells his products in Dhaka in June. Nobel Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty through his pioneering use of microloans through Grameen Bank. Photo: EPA-EFE](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/d8/images/canvas/2024/07/22/97e1839c-9b84-4646-8dc1-839e6ad4b13a_ca205262.jpg)
Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman, a marketing consultant on the Capital Punishment Justice Challenge, which has been documenting rights violations in Bangladesh for greater than 15 years, stated Hasina’s authorities had displayed a longtime sample of “weaponising the judiciary as a software”, as was evident in Yunus’ case.
“The traits of Bangladesh’s justice system are recognized for its seen double requirements. In a single state of affairs there are pro-regime state and non-state actors such because the rapid previous police chiefs, military chiefs, bureaucrats, public servants of various layers, and the ruling celebration leaders have acquired disproportionately larger quantities of wealth via corruption and abuse of energy with impunity,” he instructed This Week in Asia.
“In one other state of affairs the dissidents, opposition political leaders, high-profile personalities like Professor Yunus, impartial journalists, on-line activists, and human rights defenders face immediate arbitrary incarceration, custodial abuses and torture adopted by indictment and convictions in politically motivated circumstances with out their proper to truthful trial assured.”
Jon Danilowicz, a retired US diplomat who has served in Bangladesh, stated Hasina had “pursued a political and private vendetta” in opposition to Yunus since returning to energy in 2009.
“The authorized circumstances directed in direction of Yunus are Hasina’s chosen methodology of sending a transparent message to anybody who would dare to face as much as her. She additionally hopes to show to her supporters that Western threats to carry her regime accountable received’t be adopted up by motion,” Danilowicz instructed This Week in Asia.
As Hasina faces “her best political problem since returning to workplace in 2009”, she is little doubt nonetheless haunted by reminiscences of the 2007-08 interval when the military-backed caretaker authorities tried to sideline her, based on Danilowicz.
“Hasina and her interior circle proceed to see Professor Yunus as a possible rival given his worldwide and home standing,” he stated.
“This explains why Hasina continues to pursue her vendetta in opposition to Yunus.”