Global reaction and criticism of international media are pouring in. Social media is agog with posts after Bangladesh’s only Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, a pioneer in micro-finance has been sentenced to serve imprisonment for six months of simple or non-rigorous imprisonment for violating the law as the Grameen Telecom chairman along with three other executives of the social business company.
A Bangladeshi court has sentenced Yunus, the architect of “Banker to the Poor”, escalating what his supporters call a vendetta by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government against the founder of Grameen Bank, a microfinance institution for the poor.
In Dhaka, the Third Labour Court judge ruled that 83-year-old Yunus, who was present in the court, also slapped a BDT 25,000 (US$227) fine on each of them, saying that they would have to serve 10 more days in jail in default.
The Bank’s initiative for the empowerment of millions of rural women in Bangladesh was bestowed a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concept of microcredit and microfinance to alleviate millions from poverty in 2006.
His research into the mechanisms of poverty in Bangladesh among the landless led him to conclude that a system of small loans to those without collateral via lending outlets could allow them to set up their businesses.
Yunus is one of only seven people to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Congressional Gold Medal, and the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“I have been punished for the crime that I didn’t commit. This grief remains in my heart,” lamented Prof Yunus after the labour court delivered its verdict in a case from 2021 over allegations including improper contracts and non-payment of benefits to workers at Grameen Telecom, which Yunus founded in the 1990s.
Yunus and the three other executives of Grameen Telecom, who deny the allegations, were granted a month’s bail during which time they plan to appeal in higher court.
Prof Yunus’ supporters say the case is politically motivated. His allies have alleged that the case was a systematic campaign to sideline opponents and silence dissent. It is part of a campaign by Bangladeshi authorities to vilify one of the country’s most high-profile figures and a bitter and long-time rival of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
He has been in a protracted row with Hasina’s government due to obscure reasons while authorities began a series of investigations against him after she came to power in 2008.
She has made several scathing verbal attacks against Yunus. She called him a “bloodsucker’ of the poor and mused in a speech that someone ought to “teach him a lesson”.
While opening the longest road and railway bridge in Bangladesh said she wished to drop him (Yunus) into the Padma River. He has been blamed for having been influenced to block funds from the World Bank for the construction of the bridge over the yawning river.
Later the allegation was not true, as the Bank withdrew funds in the wake of alleged corruption against the Bangladesh authorities in favouring contracts to Chinese companies for the mega infrastructure project.
Yunus clashed with Sheikh Hasina when he founded a short-lived King’s party in 2007 during the military-backed caretaker government (2006-2008). Interestingly, one of the King’s parties founded by a war-decorated Mukti Bahini commander has been given a narrow political space in the upcoming election to be held in a few days.
Amnesty International accused the government of “weaponising labour laws” when Yunus went to trial in September and called for an immediate end to his “harassment”. Criminal proceedings against Yunus were “a form of political retaliation for his work and dissent”, the organisation said.
Irene Khan – the former head of the rights organisation Amnesty International who works as a UN special rapporteur – was present at the court. She told the French news agency AFP that the conviction was “a travesty of justice”.
Leading development economist and former adviser to the caretaker government Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman reacted in a tweet: Outraged and deeply disturbed at the Yunus verdict particularly so because of the utter credibility crisis of the judicial case. Is justice being dispensed or vendetta and intolerance?
In a statement, Yunus called the verdict “contrary to all legal precedent and logic”.
“I will continue to serve the people of Bangladesh and the social business movement to the best of my ability,” he added. “I call for the Bangladeshi people to speak in one voice against injustice and in favour of democracy and human rights for every one of our citizens.”
The verdict came only days before Bangladesh’s general election in which Sheikh Hasina is poised to win for the fifth term. She will surely be included in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest-serving woman prime minister in the world.
Ashok Swain, Professor of Peace and Conflict Research, at Uppsala University, Sweden commented that “Hasina dictatorship in Bangladesh has no limits – Her Kangaroo court has sentenced Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus to jail. It is to create the environment of fear against any dissent in the country before her election on 7 January.”
A Bangladesh-born researcher based in London Naomi Hossain is outraged. She writes: When thousands of Bangladeshi factory owners break labour with total impunity daily. Pure vindictive pettiness against a Bangladeshi the whole world respects and admires.
Prominent Pakistan policy analyst journalist and editor of the Friday Times Raza Ahmad Rumi said “Imagine persecuting an 83-year-old man who spent his life serving the poor, set up the Grameen Bank, whose work is a model for countries, organizations and activists.”
The New Delhi correspondent of the Financial Times, Benjamin Parkin writes in the British newspaper that the company denies all wrongdoing and Abdullah Al Mamun, defence lawyer of the cases “only for harassment”.
“Those people who do not like Yunus and do not like his social business, which has a big reputation growing in the world, they’re thinking that if they can destroy it in Bangladesh, it will [have an] effect all over the world,” the lawyer remarked.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch posted a tweet: “In Bangladesh, where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus is seen as a popular rival to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina because he helped to lift millions from poverty, he is given a six-month prison sentence for supposed labour violations.”
Dr Naila Kabeer, Professor, Department of International Development, London School of Economics said the current government in Bangladesh has been sinking steadily lower in its respect for law, justice, and respect for its citizens. ”This is shameful!”
Peter Beaumont writes in the Guardian, a leading British newspaper that Yunus and Grameen had come under scrutiny more than a decade ago after a documentary in 2010 that alleged the misuse of Norwegian funds. They were cleared by a subsequent Norwegian investigation.
In 2011, Hasina’s administration began a review of the bank’s activities. Yunus was fired as managing director for allegedly violating government retirement regulations. He was put on trial in 2013 on charges of receiving money without government permission, including his Nobel Prize award and royalties from a book.
An investigative journalist Zulkarnain Saer in exile in the United Kingdom urged on the international community to take note of the verdict. It is an example of how Hasina wields her power in harassing a distinguished figure like Yunus, one must question to what lengths she goes to silence her political opponents.
In August, 104 Nobel laureates, and 79 global figures voiced concern and called on Hasina to stop the “persecution” of Prof Yunus and termed as ‘judicial harassment’.
Meanwhile, Civic Courage, originally named the Centre for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation, an organisation that empowers citizen action, in a media statement said, the Nobel laureates and global figures wrote the open letter to Hasina responding to a mid-August review from an international law firm.
Hasina welcomed international experts to assess the ongoing legal proceedings against Prof Yunus. Unfortunately, no legal experts came to review his case.
