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A Bangladeshi court has sentenced Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to six months in prison over labour law violations, escalating what his supporters call a vendetta by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government against the microfinance pioneer.
A labour court in Dhaka on Monday convicted Yunus and three other executives 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 others, who deny the allegations, were granted a month’s bail during which time they plan to appeal, according to their legal team.
Yunus’s allies have alleged that the case — one of almost 200 that they say he and affiliated organisations are facing — is part of a campaign by Bangladeshi authorities to vilify the 83-year-old, one of the country’s most high-profile figures and a bitter and longtime rival of Sheikh Hasina.
The verdict came only days before Bangladesh’s general election in which Sheikh Hasina, who has been in power continuously since 2009, will seek a historic fifth term in office following what critics say is a systematic campaign to sideline opponents and silence dissent.
In the build-up to the vote on Sunday, police have arrested thousands of members of the main opposition party, which has now dropped out of the electoral race.
In a statement, Yunus called Monday’s 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 each and every one of our citizens.”
Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work in poverty reduction after helping to develop microfinance through his company Grameen Bank in the 1980s in Bangladesh, then one of the world’s poorest countries.
But he has long clashed with Sheikh Hasina and briefly founded a rival party in 2007. Sheikh Hasina has previously called Yunus a “bloodsucker” of the poor and mused in a speech that someone ought to “teach him a lesson”.
Yunus and organisations affiliated with him have faced a growing list of legal woes. This includes a separate anti-corruption probe into allegations against Grameen Telecom, which together with Norway’s state-owned Telenor is a shareholder in Bangladesh’s largest mobile operator Grameenphone.
The company denies all wrongdoing and Abdullah Al Mamun, Yunus’s barrister, told the Financial Times that the cases were “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,” he said.
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