2024-01-01 13:33:23
by Irene Soave
The case for which the creator of the “microcredit” was indicted is a labor law case; but a few days before the January 7 elections the opposition speaks of a “political arrest”
He is eighty-three years old, with the nickname “banker of the poor” and a Nobel Peace Prize won in 2006 for his great vision: microcredit. The Grameen Bank he founded in 1983 has enabled women without means to access financing to start businesses and make a living. And if Bangladesh has emerged from absolute poverty, the credit also goes to him.
Yet now Muhammad Yunus has been sentenced to six months in prison, along with three colleagues from Grameen Telecom – the country’s largest communications company – for violating some labor laws. The sentence arrived on January 1; all four defendants were allowed to post bail pending appeal. Meanwhile, there is another trial against Yunus, for corruption and tax evasion, and in total he has to answer for more than one hundred charges.
His lawyer speaks of a “political ruling”: the economist’s visionary works have attracted the enmity of the authoritarian Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who for years has called him a “bloodsucker” and a “profiteer”. Hasina has governed continuously since 2009, and the upcoming elections – January 7 – will predictably see her as the winner after the withdrawal from the electoral campaign of the opposition parties, who are boycotting the vote because it is “rigged”.
Hasina has launched several ferocious verbal attacks against Yunus, who was once considered a possible political rival of hers. And now Yunus and three Grameen Telecom executives have been accused of failing to create a welfare fund for workers at the company. All four deny the charges. “This verdict is unprecedented,” Abdullah Al Mamun, Yunus’ lawyer, told AFP. “We didn’t get justice.”
After one of the hearings last month, Yunus said he had not profited from any of the more than 50 social enterprise companies he had set up in Bangladesh. “They were not for my personal benefit,” Yunus said. Another of his lawyers, Khaja Tanvir, told AFP that the case is “baseless, false and poorly motivated. It has the sole purpose of harassing and humiliating him in front of the world.”
Irene Khan, former head of Amnesty International and now special rapporteur of the United Nations, who was present at the verdict, speaks about “Parody of justice”. “A social activist and Nobel Prize winner who brought honor and pride to the country is being persecuted for trivial reasons.”
In August, 160 major international figures, including former US President Barack Obama and former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, published a joint letter denouncing the “continuing judicial harassment” of Yunus. The signatories, including more than 100 other Nobel laureates, said they feared for his “safety and freedom.” From today the second is concretely at risk.
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January 1, 2024 (changed January 1, 2024 | 1:42 pm)
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