Conspiracy, lies, treachery, diversion, ungratefulness, and blame games are the common features of Nobel laureate and former Grameen Bank managing director Prof Muhammad Yunus. He would take credit for positive elements and never admit his faults or crimes—be it a tax evasion case or benefits from a friend or well-wisher. He has no shame.
The Bangladesh Chief Adviser recently lied about his contact with the students while talking to Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times in a podcast in late January. See how:
Q: And where were you at this point?
Yunus: I was in Paris…
Q: And so how did you then get the call and come back?
Yunus: That day (August 5) when the first call came, I was in the hospital just for a small operation. So they called. I was watching the news everyday on the mobile phone what is happening in Bangladesh. They said she left. Now we have to have a government. Please form the government for us. I said, no, I’m not the one. I don’t know anything about it and I don’t want to get involved with it.
Q: Who was it who contacted you?
Yunus: Students. I don’t know these guys. Never heard of them. Never knew them…
But his lies were debunked by an adviser and leaders of his King’s party, the Jatiya Nagorik Party, in several Facebook posts recently.
Muhammad Yunus: A fraudster and hypocrite since childhood
How US State Department spread rumors to fuel Bangladesh’s July uprising
How Hillary Clinton abused power to help Prof Yunus and punish Sheikh Hasina
Abdul Hannan Masud, a former student coordinator and now leader of the newly formed Jatiya Nagorik Party, a brainchild of Yunus, said he got the first message from Prof Yunus via US-based journalist and executive director of Right to Freedom Mushfiqul Fazal Ansarey on the evening of August 1.
Ansarey earlier served Khaleda Zia as the assistant press secretary to the prime minister from 2001-06. He was made the ambassador to Mexico after the August 5 changeover.
Masud gave his version of the key issues of the protest on February 17, mentioning that the student coordinators established contact with expatriate journalists Tasneem Khalil, Zulkarnain Saer and Ansarey and other people, and various senior citizens supporting the movement.
He said after being chased by intelligence agency members, they left the Kuwait-Maitree Hospital in Uttara and took refuge in the office of an influential international organization with the help of Md Muntasir Rahman, who is linked to the US embassy, Zulkarnain and a journalist. From that office, they gave the first video message on Facebook. Shahidul Alam, the founder of Drik Gallery and a key aide to Yunus, arranged their stay in his friend’s English medium school in Gulshan the following day.
Another coordinator, SM Shahed Emon, said the then-president of Islami Chhatra Shibir’s Dhaka University unit, Abu Shadik Kayem, was the first to contact the Nobel laureate via email on August 2 or 3. The email was written by DU Shibir’s general secretary (now president), SM Farhad, Emon said in a Facebook post.
Zulkarnain Saer, a sacked army officer who works for Bangla Outlook and the Al Jazeera investigation team, also confirms the correspondence between Kayem and Yunus in an X thread.
North South University teacher Bobby Hajjaj, the chairman of the Nationalist Democratic Movement, in a TV talk-show took credit of contacting Yunus seeking his proactive role after the student protest turned violent on August 18.
The most credible information comes from interim government adviser Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain, who, in a Facebook post, recently said that after being freed from the DB police custody on August 1, he contacted Badiul Alam Majumder and Prof Ali Riaz (made heads of two of the reform commissions). Then he reached out to Dr Yunus through his personal assistants—Moin Ahmed and Shabbir Ahmad. Asif added that he later spoke to Dr Yunus every day from August 2-5.
Civil society leader Badiul is the country director of the US-based charity The Hunger Project and founder-secretary of Citizens for Good Governance (SHUJAN). He became the chief of the Commission on Election Commission reforms after the government changeover.
On the other hand, Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi-American, is a distinguished professor at the Department of Politics and Government of Illinois University. He is also a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council and is associated with the Bangladeshi NGO, Centre for Governance Studies. Prof Yunus made him the chairman of the Constitution Reform Commission.
Shabbir, a senior program officer at Yunus Centre since 2018, is now serving as the APS to the chief adviser.
Earlier, former Shibir president Mirza Galib, an assistant professor at Howard University, Shadik Kayem, and SM Farhad shared in detail about their roles in newspapers and TV in the last six months. However, no mainstream media has published news about them.
Galib said they prepared the nine-point charter, adding demands that would be hard for the government to agree to, as they had learned that the Awami League would agree to the students’ demand for abolishing the quota system.
Kayem revealed in an op-ed published by the pro-Jamaat Amar Desh newspaper how his radical Islamist party coordinated the movement and deployed cadres at 10 points of the capital city to force the government to resign from August 3—two days after the government banned Jamaat-Shibir, blaming it for widespread arson attacks and murder of police and ruling party members.
The Shibir leader never used his political identity during the movement; rather, he wore the signature headband of the Bangladesh flag and chanted the popular slogans of the 1971 Liberation War. The mainstream media also didn’t mention it, though it’s a fundamental principle of journalism.
After the OHCHR released its full report on February 12, Kayem said in a Facebook post that his team was working closely with the fact-finding mission on the ground.
Sarjis Alam, a key coordinator of the student platform who is now a top leader of the Nagorik Party, said that Chhatra Shibir supported the July-August uprising both directly and indirectly by being present on the streets and playing the role of allies in crucial steps.
Another student coordinator, Abdul Kader, opened up about Shibir’s role in the movement and how it turned into an anti-government movement through the announcement of the nine-point demand. A news report on his Facebook post can be accessed here.
On the other hand, the media wing chief of the banned extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Imtiaz Selim, told BBC Bangla that they had kept their identities secret during the movement. After Sheikh Hasina’s fall, HT jihadists carried out victory processions in Dhaka and some other districts using students with the Kalema flags and demanded that the interim government withdraw the ban.
Army-Yunus clique, the second time
From 2005 until January 1, 2007, the same civil society leaders linked to the US embassy were highlighting the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as a corrupt political entity that patronizes pro-Pakistani jihadist elements, even though the Jamaat-e-Islami and Hefazat Islam’s mother organization, Islami Oikyo Jote—a pro-Taliban Qawmi madrasa platform—were also part of that coalition government.
The mainstream media echoed the narrative supplied by military intelligence, the US and the Western community to imply that the interim government was conducting political and administrative reforms to clean up the mess. They said it would take 5-10 years.
It’s widely believed that Yunus was conferred the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 as a political award by the US to make him an alternative to the Awami League and the BNP. Even though he didn’t assume the office of the chief adviser, Yunus remained all in all behind the 1/11 government.
After 17 years, the same actors are in power and are talking about extensive reforms to weaken the BNP, eliminate the Awami League, and rehabilitate Jamaat and its extremist elements.
The army was the de facto ruler in 2007 since they declared an emergency before cracking down on politicians, but this time, to avoid criticism, they didn’t make the same mistake. Instead, they gave themselves magistracy powers in September 2024.
The inaction of the army during curfews in July 2024 and the March to Dhaka program on August 5 expose its intentions. Moreover, the massive anarchy, mass killings of police and Awami League members, occupation of property, and the systematic persecution of the minorities after the fall of the Awami League government show how the army was working with Jamaat and jihadists to establish a pro-US and pro-Pakistani government.
The army’s assistance is also exposed as the leaders of the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, the notorious Islami Chhatra Shibir, have started to take credit for designing and organizing the student-led uprising in July under the guise of an anti-quota movement. Jamaat-Shibir never considers camouflage as unethical, rather justifying the tactics as a tool during jihad.
The release of al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants, the army’s inaction and the involvement of former army officials expose the government’s pro-Islamist mindset.
It’s unfortunate that the government is also pondering to give a clean chit to al-Qaeda affiliated militant and sacked major Syed Ziaul Haque, who has admitted his involvement in the August 2024 coup and the attempted coup in 2011 in a YouTube interview with Al Jazeera’s Zulkarnain Saer Sami.
The allegations against the army put forward by former home minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and the activities by the pro-US and pro-jihadist former army officers before the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government also reveal the camouflaged army coup on August 5.
Several student leaders, including Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud, have said that the army high-ups were in contact with politicians and civil society leaders from August 3 onwards.
On March 7, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Volker Türk, “admitted” on BBC HardTalk that he warned the Bangladesh Army about their potential involvement after the government declared curfew to quell the protests on July 19, threatening their UN peacekeeping status.
The OHCHR does not have the power to enforce or threaten changes to a country’s peacekeeping status. Such authority lies with the UN Security Council or the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).
Threatening a sovereign nation’s military with consequences for internal actions could be interpreted as interference, violating Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, unless the actions clearly breached international human rights or humanitarian law.
On July 22, Yunus urged the international community to stop the deadly violence that wracked his country since students started protesting against civil service hiring rules.
“I urgently call on world leaders and the United Nations to do everything within their powers to end the violence against those who are exercising their rights to protest,” he said in a statement from France.
“There must be investigations into the killings that have taken place already,” he added in his first public comments since the unrest began. “Bangladesh has been engulfed in a crisis that only seems to get worse with each passing day,” he said. “High school students have been among the victims.”
On August 1, Yunus changed his Facebook profile picture to red in solidarity with the movement.
Former army chief and a key coordinator of the anti-government uprising, Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan, actively took part in the social media campaign. On August 4, from a gathering of retired army officers in Dhaka, he asked the government to withdraw the army and resolve the crisis through dialogues and negotiations.
How Hillary exerted pressure on Bangladesh
After the Awami League came to power in 2009, when the irregularities and misdeeds of Grameen Bank started to be exposed, Prof Yunus sought Hillary Clinton’s help. In an email on September 17, Dr Yunus asked Hillary, then the secretary of state, to “find a way to clear her [Sheikh Hasina] mind of all the terrifying thoughts” she had about him and become a peacemaker.
Hillary abused her power to engage the Dhaka embassy officials, former diplomats, US businessmen and world leaders to rally for Yunus, terming the allegations and legal proceedings against Yunus false and motivated.
The Associated Press reported that Prof Yunus met with Hillary three times during the course of the Bangladesh government investigation against him.
US-based newspaper The Daily Caller published an exclusive where it stated that the US State Department under Hillary Clinton had pressured Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son and ICT advisor to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to cease government action against Prof Yunus.
According to the Daily Caller, their investigators discovered that State Department aides had threatened Joy—a US citizen—with the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to look into his financials.
Joy, who told them that in 2010 and 2012, the US State Department officials frequently told him to ask his mother to drop investigations against Prof Yunus. Joy said he found it “astounding and mind-boggling” that the US government would behave in such a manner with one of its own citizens.
PM Hasina at the Munich Security Conference in February 2017 said that Hillary had phoned her on occasions for the same purpose. Around the same time (2012), the World Bank also cancelled a $1.2 billion loan for the construction of Padma Bridge.
Joy, a resident of Falls Church in Virginia, lived less than 10 miles from the US capital of Washington DC. During his stay, he was frequently visited by US government officials who would relentlessly bring up the Yunus issue.
In 2017, the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary opened an investigation to find out whether former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her position to intervene in an “independent investigation” against Prof Yunus by a “sovereign government” in Bangladesh.
Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the committee, in a letter asked the State Department to make former deputy chief of mission of the US Embassy in Dhaka Jon Danilowicz available for an interview with the committee staff.
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