by M Serajul Islam 13 September 2023
THE letter of the 176 world leaders, including president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and 105 Nobel laureates is available on Google for anyone to see. The leaders requested prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, to ‘suspend’ and ‘review’ the judicial proceedings against the Nobel laureate Dr Muhammed Yunus by a panel of ‘impartial judges’ drawn from Bangladesh and ‘internationally recognised legal experts.’
They believed that the Nobel laureate had been the victim of ‘continuous judicial harassment’ and may soon be jailed. They criticised Bangladesh for ‘threats to democracy and human rights’ and stated that its last two elections ‘lacked legitimacy’. They hoped that the legal issues of Dr Yunus would be settled in an ‘expedient, impartial and just manner’ and that the next general election of Bangladesh would be ‘free, fair and participatory’ based on respect for human rights.
The prime minister did not hide her anger at the letter. She, nevertheless, handled it deftly in the press conference that she held to brief the nation on her recent participation in the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. She underlined that the judiciary in Bangladesh was free and independent and that ‘no one in the country is above the law.’ She stated that the cases against Dr Yunus were justified. She invited western lawyers to visit Bangladesh and examine the cases.
The letter became breaking news worldwide the moment it was released to the media. Like a chorus, the world media backed the world leaders and agreed with their concern. The letter underlined support for a world leader in distress in a manner like no other world leader in distress in recent history, not even Dr Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Ki.
Pro-Awami League professional groups and individuals in Bangladesh and among expatriate Bangladeshis abroad, in particular in the United States, condemned the letter and the world leaders. The vice-chancellor of the University of Dhaka called the world leaders as individuals ‘without principles.’ An editor of a Bangla daily newspaper, one of the 50 local editors who condemned the letter in a joint statement, said that Nobel laureate Yunus paid money for the letter. Some of the groups agreed with the editor. They were not bothered that they were crossing the limits of absurdity in accusing president Obama, a Nobel laureate, of taking money from Dr Yunus to sign the letter.
These individuals and groups termed the letter an attack on Bangladesh’s sovereignty and its judicial process. Some of them wanted the Nobel peace committee to withdraw Dr Yunus’s Nobel prize. Their reactions were surreal and bizarre where reality and reason were thrown to the winds. The Dhaka University Teachers’ Association and more than 800 of its teachers condemned the 105 Nobel laureates who reached the highest peak in the pursuit of knowledge by winning the Nobel prize in their respective fields. In hundred years’ history of the University of Dhaka, not one teacher came close to winning one.
The Bangladeshi individuals and groups condemned the world leaders with an ostrich mentality in pursuit of one objective. They assumed, and perhaps rightly, that the prime minister was furious over the letter. They were, therefore, in a competition to attack the world leaders and Nobel laureates like they were inconsequential, ordinary individuals who showed the audacity to criticise the prime minister to win her favour. Their way of defending the prime minister has been blatant sycophancy and little else.
There was, nevertheless, a time when the prime minister and Nobel laureate Yunus had cordial relations. They attended the World Microcredit Summit in Washington in 1997 to claim credit for Bangladesh as the pioneer for microcredit as a successful experiment in poverty alleviation from the bottom with a focus on women. It was also the time when the prime minister concluded the Ganges water accord in 1996 and the Chittagong Hill Tracts peace accord in 1997.
The prime minister’s inner circles led by some senior bureaucrats believed that, with these achievements, she would be a formidable candidate for the Nobel peace prize. A high-profile unofficial committee of senior secretaries was set up for lobbying abroad. The efforts ended with the Awami League losing power in 2001. Dr Yunus won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 and toyed with the idea of floating a political party. These developments ended the prime minister’s relations with Dr Yunus. Her inner circles persuaded her not only to believe that the Nobel laureate took the prize that was coming to her by influencing western leaders like Hillary Clinton, but that he had also shown the audacity to challenge her politically.
Dr Yunus’s misfortune in his relations with the prime minister turned into a nightmare soon after the Awami League won the 2008 election. Dr Yunus became a ‘bloodsucker’ of the poor for Grameen Bank’s high interest rates. The World Bank’s decision to withdraw from the Padma bridge which was the jewel in the prime minister’s vision for the economic development of Bangladesh was, as the cliché goes, the straw that broke the camel’s back in the prime minister’s relations with Dr Yunus.
The prime minister and her inner circles accused Dr Yunus of using his friendship with Hillary Clinton who was then the US secretary of state to influence the World Bank to cancel the loan. Dr Yunus, thereafter, graduated from the ‘bloodsucker’ to the ‘traitor’ without any tangible or intangible evidence that he interfered in the World Bank loan. The prime minister, nevertheless, continued to believe in her accusation.
Dr Yunus, meanwhile, became a household name worldwide. Bangladesh and the Nobel laureate became synonymous. World leaders felt proud to be his friend and citizens worldwide were eager to welcome him in their midst as a super star. He became one with Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Aung San Suu Kyi, Martin Luther King, Norman Borlaug and Mother Teresa, the winner of the rare trifecta that included the Nobel peace prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2013).
The AL regime went into total denial as Dr Yunus became one of the most respected leaders on the world stage right under its nose. Instead, it piled up cases galore against the Nobel laureate that were almost all tax- and labour-related that could have very well been settled out of court and should have been done so for the respect with which the world held him. The other strange aspect of Dr Yunus’s ordeal has been its one-way nature. The Nobel laureate has kept his trademark smile without uttering even a word while the prime minister insulted and humiliated him in public at will.
Dr Yunus’s fame has once again come between him and the prime minister with the Nobel laureate again contributing nothing towards it. There is a strong rumour that the United States wants Dr Yunus to head an interim administration for three years to avoid a deadly conflict between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party over the next general election. This, perhaps, explains the current interest of the courts to pursue the Nobel laureate, to convict him and push him out from leading the interim administration that has also prompted the world leaders to write the letter.
A single court case against any Nobel laureate in any country would instantly become breaking news in the world media. Dr Yunus has collected a mind-boggling 174 civil cases that include violations of labour laws, corruption and money laundering. The numbers strongly suggest something eerie. It also justifies the ‘continuous judicial harassment’ remark in the letter of the world leaders.
Bangladesh’s image globally is on a slippery slope. The individuals and groups that opposed the world leaders in bizarre ways to please the prime minister have tried to mislead her and Bangladesh. They have also unwittingly exposed that outside their circles, no one was willing to defend the prime minister at home or abroad against the 176 world leaders who addressed the letter to her in support of Nobel peace prize winner Dr Muhammed Yunus, her nemesis.
Postscript: Sycophancy cost the AL regime and Bangladesh dearly and immensely in the past. Sycophancy is again misleading the AL regime and the country.
M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.