New Delhi: Bangladesh Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus, renowned for transforming the lives of Bangladesh’s rural population, has been convicted by a Dhaka court on charges of labour law violation. The charges and his conviction are being described as “politically motivated” by his supporters.
“The allegation of violating the Labour Law against him has been proved. It appears that the allegation has not been barred by limitation (either),” said labour court judge Sheikh Merina Sultana while pronouncing the judgment, according to PTI.
Along with Muhammad Yunus, three other executives of Grameen Telecom, a social business company he founded, were awarded six months of simple or non-rigorous imprisonment. They were immediately granted one-month bail after furnishing bonds of Taka 5,000 each.
“This verdict is unprecedented,” Abdullah Al Mamun, a lawyer for Yunus, told AFP. “We did not get justice.”
It is reported that the convicted individuals are expected to appeal the verdict in the High Court.
Yunus’s supporters have described the charges against him and the firms he founded are a result of his protracted row with Sheikh Hasina’s government. Hasina accused him of “sucking blood” of the poor. The charge against Yunus and three colleagues from Grameen Telecom is that the firm violated labour laws by failing to create a workers’ welfare fund in the company. Yunus is facing as many as 100 other charges in connection with the same.
Yunus, the 83-year-old Nobel Prize winner, who won the award in 2006, has been acclaimed for lifting millions out of poverty through his anti-poverty campaign through the Grameen Bank, a mode which was replicated across continents.
However, since 2008 when Hasina assumed power, Yunus’s nearly 50 social business firms have been through several investigations for allegedd violations of several laws. In August, 160 global figures, including former US president Barack Obama and ex-United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, published a joint letter denouncing “continuous judicial harassment” of Yunus. The letter, which was also signed by over 100 Nobel Prize winners, said they feared for “his safety and freedom”.