Bangladesh Unrest Updates: About 300 people were killed and thousands injured in violence.
Dhaka:
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was named chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
Muhammad Yunus was appointed to the post by Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin after he held meetings with student leaders and chiefs of the three military services, local media reported late on Tuesday, citing a statement and officials from the president’s office.
Student protesters had threatened more demonstrations if parliament was not dissolved.
The movement that toppled Hasina rose out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for families of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, seen by critics as a means to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.
About 300 people were killed and thousands injured in violence that had ripped through the country since July.
Here are the LIVE updates on Bangladesh unrest:
- The military-backed appointment of Yunus to temporarily lead Bangladesh is a remarkable turn of events for the economist.
- Over the past couple of years, Yunus has spent much of his time inside Dhaka’s courtrooms, fighting about 200 charges against him and his associates, including allegations of money laundering and graft.
- He and his supporters say Hasina’s government was behind the legal pressure and perhaps saw him as a threat to her power. She denied those accusations.
- Yunus, 84, is best known for founding Grameen Bank and pioneering microcredit – providing tiny business loans to the world’s poorest people, most of them women.
- Though he’s spent much of his life in the public eye, politics is largely unexplored terrain. In 2007, the Bangladeshi government splintered, and the military seized power.
- Yunus, who’d never run for office, considered forming a new party to fill the vacuum, but ultimately scrapped the idea within a few weeks.
- Bangladesh is pinning its hopes on one of the nation’s most acclaimed intellectuals to bring stability to a country scarred by coups and political upheaval.
- Muhammad Yunus, whose work alleviating poverty won him a Nobel Peace Prize, was named the head of a new interim government on Tuesday following the sudden ouster of Sheikh Hasina as prime minister this week.
- Though he’s mostly stayed away from politics, Yunus is one of Bangladesh’s most famous faces and brings considerable clout with Western elites.
- Restoring normalcy to Bangladesh won’t be a small feat for Yunus. Over the past few weeks, clashes between protesters and security personnel cost the lives of more than 300 people, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the South Asian nation’s history.
- nd while Hasina lifted millions out of poverty through garment exports, economic growth has lately stalled in Bangladesh, prompting the International Monetary Fund to step in with bailout funds.
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