police van transports protesters to the court, after their arrest in Dhaka on July 23, 2024. The number of arrests in days of violence in Bangladesh passed the 2,500 mark in an AFP tally on July 23, after protests over employment quotas sparked widespread unrest.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The number of arrests in days of violence in Bangladesh passed the 2,500 mark on July 23, after protests over employment quotas sparked widespread unrest.

At least 174 people have died, including several police officers, according to a separate count of victims reported by police and hospitals.

What began as demonstrations against politicised admission quotas for sought-after government jobs snowballed last week into some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s tenure.

A curfew was imposed and soldiers deployed across the South Asian country. A nationwide Internet blackout drastically restricted the flow of information.

The student group leading the demonstrations suspended its protests on Monday for 48 hours, with its leader saying they had not wanted reform “at the expense of so much blood”.

Nahid Islam — who said he feared for his life — extended the halt on July 23 evening by another 48 hours, taking it to July 26.

Restrictions remained in place after the army chief said the situation had been brought “under control”.

The Telecommunications Minister said broadband Internet would be restored on Tuesday evening, although he made no mention of mobile Internet — a key communication method for protest organisers.

And officials said an afternoon break in the curfew would be extended to five hours on July 24 to help citizens obtain daily necessities, with banks re-opening for the first time.

There was a heavy military presence in Dhaka, with bunkers set up at some intersections and key roads blocked with barbed wire.

But more people were on the streets, as were hundreds of rickshaws.

“I did not drive rickshaws the first few days of curfew, But today I didn’t have any choice,” rickshaw driver Hanif said.

“If I don’t do it, my family will go hungry.”

Nahid, the head of Students Against Discrimination, the main group organising the protests, said there would be no protests during the 48-hour extension.

“Our demand is the government restore the internet, withdraw the curfew, reopen campuses and protect the students protesters”, he said, including “returning” four missing co-ordinators from his organisation.

While order has largely been restored across Bangladesh, Mubashar Hasan, a Sydney-based expert on Bangladeshi politics, told AFP the crackdown would further taint the government’s global image.

It would be “perceived further as a government that not only criminalises politics, it uses its own security forces to shoot down protesters, its own citizens”.

‘Killed at random’

The authorities’ response to the protests has been widely criticised.

“Young people are being killed at random every day. Hospitals do not reveal the number of wounded and dead,” Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus told AFP.

The respected 84-year-old economist is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering microfinance bank but Hasina has accused him of “sucking blood” from the poor.

The United Nations said it had expressed “serious concern” to Bangladesh authorities over “disturbing reports” of vehicles with UN markings being used during the crackdown. Bangladesh is a key contributor to UN peacekeeping missions and has such equipment in its military inventories.

Government officials have repeatedly blamed the protesters and opposition for the unrest.

More than 1,200 people were detained over the course of the violence— nearly half the 2,580 total— were held in Dhaka and its rural and industrial areas, according to police officials who spoke to AFP.

Almost 600 were arrested in Chittagong and its rural areas, with hundreds more detentions tallied in districts across the country.

Entrenched hold on power

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the June reintroduction of the quota scheme— halted since 2018— deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

With protests mounting, the Supreme Court curtailed on Sunday the number of reserved jobs from 56 percent of all positions to seven percent, mostly for the children and grandchildren of “freedom fighters” from the 1971 war.

The decision fell short of protesters’ demands to scrap the “freedom fighter” category altogether.

Ms. Hasina’s spokesman told AFP late on July 22 she had approved a government order putting the Supreme Court’s judgement into effect.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina’s Awami League.

Ms. Hasina, 76, has ruled the country since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including by the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Illustration: Sreejith R.Kumar

Muhammad Yunus and his grassroots Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for lending a social conscience to capitalism and “their efforts to create economic and social development from below” in Bangladesh. At 83, the “banker to the poor” does not appear to be slowing down. He strives, he asserts, for a world of three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions.

Instead of shunning capitalism, Mr. Yunus’s approach has been to humanise it. “The capitalist system is a machine which sucks up wealth from the bottom to send it to the top. It is not the fault of individuals at the top. They follow what the system asks them to do: chase money,” Mr. Yunus said in an interview with The New York Times in 2017. “But in the process, wealth at the top grows like a giant mushroom owned by fewer and fewer people — for the simple reason that the more they have, the more they get. Wealth is a magnet.”

Also read: Explained | Why are cases against Mohammad Yunus drawing attention?

Small loans

Mr. Yunus modified this system by allowing humans to express selflessness through what is known as social business. The concept, although deemed unrealistic by many, caught the Western imagination. It evolved from his practice of granting poor people small loans on easy terms — the cornerstone of the Grameen Bank since its establishment in 1983.

After completing his studies in Bangladesh and the U.S., Mr. Yunus was appointed professor of economics at the University of Chittagong in 1972. When Bangladesh suffered a famine in 1974, he ventured beyond the realm of teaching. He decided to give loans to people who wanted to start their own small enterprises. That initiative was expanded through the Grameen Bank on a large scale. Under his tutelage, the Grameen Bank played a pivotal role in eradicating poverty through microlending. More than 100 nations have sought to replicate this model.

However, his ‘banking for the poor’ venture has come under attack from some quarters. Microcredit is said to carry unusually high interest rates due to a lack of collateral and the overheads associated with administering small loans. Mr. Yunus himself admitted that some organisations may have abused the microcredit system for profit. As microcredit expanded all over the world, it became less likely that borrowers would be monitored and protected from falling deep into debt like before. Critics cite modest benefits associated with microcredit, overindebtedness, and a trend toward commercialisation that is less focused on serving the poor.

Disputes at home

At home, Mr. Yunus became embroiled in a barrage of legal cases. In 2011, he was removed by Bangladesh’s central bank from the post of managing director at the world’s best-known microlender, for holding on to the post past his retirement age. Mr. Yunus lost the court battle stemming from regulatory steps. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on many occasions, accused him of influencing the World Bank’s exit from the nation’s largest bridge project, an allegation he has consistently denied.

More than a decade later, a criminal case against Mr. Yunus alleges three breaches under the country’s Labour Act and may lead to a jail sentence. This is just one of more than 150 cases filed against him after the ruling Awami League party came to power in 2008, according to Amnesty International. On October 5, the nation’s anti-graft agency interrogated Mr. Yunus for more than an hour on money laundering charges. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Despite all these unsavoury sideshows, Mr. Yunus will be remembered for his role in expanding microfinance around the world. Almost 40 years ago, when the concept of microfinance as a poverty reduction tool was in its infancy, he fuelled hope that microcredit would transform economic and social structures with its focus on reaching the previously unbanked. By one estimate, the global microfinance market was valued at $178.8 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach $496.9 billion by 2030.

(Arun Devnath is a journalist based in Dhaka)

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus along with his lawyers at the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) office in Dhaka on October 5.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The story so far:

In May this year, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed a case against several members of the board of directors of Grameen Telecom, that included Nobel laureate Dr. Mohammad Yunus, over allegations that the board was involved in misusing funds from the workers. This was one of the several complaints against Mr. Yunus, the 2006 winner of the Nobel peace prize, known for his unique venture of microfinancing in Bangladesh. In the backdrop of a slew of official investigations by the Sheikh Hasina government, an open letter by 175 global leaders that included Nobel laureates called for the withdrawal of judicial cases against Mr. Yunus.

How is the U.S. playing a role?

Over the past several years, the Bangladesh government has faced sustained criticism from the U.S. government, especially from the U.S. State Department for alleged democratic backsliding on human rights issues. In this context, the support from senior figures within the U.S. establishment like the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has made Mr. Yunus a representative figure of U.S.’s diplomatic pressure and a rival to the Sheikh Hasina government. It is this angle that has added an international and political dimension to the cases against Mr. Yunus.

Does he pose a political challenge?

Mohammed Yunus received the Nobel prize in 2006 when Sheikh Hasina was out of power and Bangladesh was being ruled by a military-backed caretaker government. It was also a phase when Bangladesh faced the threat of terrorism repeatedly. In 2007, Mr. Yunus issued an advertisement in a leading newspaper seeking public opinion about him launching a political party. That was the first and the most prominent indication of his political intent. Sheikh Hasina was in jail at that time for nearly 11 months under charges of extortion.

Since the beginning of the second term of Sheikh Hasina’s government in 2009, Mr. Yunus has faced increased scrutiny for his initiatives. In October 2019, a Dhaka court even issued an arrest warrant against him after he failed to appear in person in a case of alleged violation of labour law. His famed model of financial support to women of rural Bangladesh has also come under the scrutiny of the Bangladesh government. However, in the backdrop of the U.S.’s campaign, there has been a hushed demand for a “third alternative” or a government that will not be led by the Awami League or its political rival the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

What is the third alternative?

Bangladesh is in a state of political stalemate between the ruling Awami League and the BNP. On the one hand, there is the Awami League government that is not in favour of holding elections under a caretaker government and on the other hand there is the BNP that wants elections under a caretaker government. Then there is another section in Bangladesh who, with the support from the U.S., has silently championed the third alternative which will be led by Mr. Yunus. The fact that Mr. Yunus enjoys the support of the Americans who critique Sheikh Hasina has made him a political rival of sorts for Ms. Hasina.

What is the PM’s position?

In response to concerns for Mr. Yunus, Sheikh Hasina has said that international observers are welcome to join the probe. More investigators joining the probe will further unmask him, Ms. Hasina said. This, however, does not indicate that political shadow boxing has ended between the two. The investigation that Ms. Hasina’s government began in 2009-11 has reached a critical phase. The trial of Mr. Yunus began on August 22 and focuses on his reluctance to obey the labour laws of Bangladesh. Various outfits like the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments are involved in taking the cases forward. Charges against Yunus include failure of Grameen Telecom in regularising 101 staff members and a workers’ welfare fund. The biggest but unspoken allegation against Mr. Yunus is that he abused his celebrity status to avoid accountability.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Outrage is growing as Muhammad Yunus, the chairman of Grameen Telecom, faces a barrage of court cases tied to employment-related violations in what rights organisations called harassment of the Nobel laureate by the Bangladesh government.

A criminal case that alleges three breaches under the Labour Act has gathered speed and may lead to a jail sentence. Mr. Yunus and three other board members, Ashraful Hassan, Nurjahan Begum and M Shahjahan, face the same charges.

This is just one of more than 150 cases filed against Mr. Yunus after the ruling Awami League party came to power in 2008, according to Amnesty International.

Initiating criminal proceedings against Mr. Yunus and his colleagues for issues that belong to the civil and administrative arena is a “blatant abuse of labour laws and the justice system and a form of political retaliation for his work and dissent”, Amnesty said in a statement on September 18.

The case is “emblematic of the beleaguered state of human rights in Bangladesh, where the authorities have eroded freedoms and bulldozed critics into submission”, said Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International.

“The abuse of laws and misuse of the justice system to settle vendettas is inconsistent and incompatible with international human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Bangladesh is a state party,” said Ms. Callamard. “It is time for the government to put an end to this travesty of justice.”

In the case, a labour inspector from a government agency primarily alleges that employees of Grameen Telecom were not classified as permanent workers after the probationary period. Employees were not granted annual leave with pay or money against earned leave, according to the second allegation. And the accused failed to establish a worker welfare fund by depositing 5 percent of the company’s net profit.

The latest development prompted more than 170 global leaders, including Nobel laureates, to write an open letter to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 28, demanding the immediate suspension of the current judicial proceedings against Mr. Yunus, followed by a review of the charges by a panel of impartial judges.

“We are confident that any thorough review of the anti-corruption and labour law cases against him will result in his acquittal,” they wrote.

“We hope that you ensure the resolution of these legal issues in an expedient, impartial, and just manner while also ensuring a free, fair, and participatory national election in the coming months, and respect for all human rights,” they added.

The Bangladesh government reacted to this letter, saying an alternative process of reviewing the charges against Mr. Yunus and his “cohorts” is “incompatible with Bangladesh’s established judicial system”.

“This is not the first time that Dr. Muhammad Yunus and his aides have resorted to international lobbying in the face of legal consequences for their alleged or proven violation of law,” the foreign ministry in Dhaka said in a statement on September 1.

“The allegations of persecution or harassment seem to follow a pattern that stems from a victim mentality using human rights and democracy as an expedient cover,” the ministry said.

The government condemned what it said was a veiled threat “under the pretext of promoting democracy and human rights”.