Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, launched a new series of unhinged attacks while speaking before Parliament and on national television a few days back. Her focus was on the United States, the Bengali language daily newspaper Protham Alo, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus.
She also spoke of a “global recession” despite the fact that the world economy grew by 3.4% in 2022 and is projected to grow by 2.9% in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund. (A recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.) Perhaps she should check in with her economists more often.
We will leave it to the PM to explain the wisdom of attacking the United States on the eve of her hapless Foreign Minister’s meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. The State Department’s official report on the meeting on April 10 contained these words of warning despite typical diplomatic understatement: “Secretary Blinken expressed concerns about violence against and intimidation of the media and civil society, including under the Digital Security Act. He underscored that free and fair elections and respect for human rights in Bangladesh are critical…”
As part of her broadside against the United States, the Prime Minister decried the expulsion of two state representatives in Tennessee. She failed to note that rather than being thrown in jail or criticized by their head of government, as these two critics of the state might have been in Bangladesh, the lawmakers were widely celebrated in the media, received supportive calls from the nation’s president and vice-president, and were on their way to being reelected to their positions. It’s impressive what checks and balances can do when they are in place! Sadly, due to years of democratic backsliding, Bangladesh has few checks on the Prime Minister’s power these days.
Sheikh Hasina then attacked a respected newspaper, Protham Alo, drawing from the same tired authoritarian playbook she has been using for years to stifle dissent. The newspaper’s well-researched articles, a few of which indirectly criticized the government by quoting citizens talking about the hardships they were experiencing, led her to call it “the enemy of the Awami League, democracy, and the people” of Bangladesh. She further claimed, without evidence, that the newspaper “never wanted stability in the country” and that when a military-backed government took power in 2007, “they were very happy.”
Finally, she criticized Professor Yunus for having run a bank that charges interest—despite the fact that Grameen Bank’s interest rate is among the lowest in the world for microcredit institutions, and despite the fact that the bank has not reversed its sensible policies under new leadership. She further fulminated about Professor Yunus’ personal earnings, which have in fact been entirely invested in Bangladesh and have all been scrupulously reported to the government. (Since the government has been auditing his personal finances for more more than a decade, one would think they would have already published any issues they had discovered, even small ones. But they remain silent, except for calling for new reports to review.)
In fact, Professor Yunus has not only brought all of his own income, mostly from speaking fees and book sales, into Bangladesh through legal channels, but he has also attracted millions of dollars of investment into Bangladeshi social businesses where the investors forsake any rights to repatriate their profits outside of Bangladesh.
Furthermore, all of the social businesses he has helped start in other countries have, without exception, been financed by socially-minded investors outside of Bangladesh, and certainly not by Professor Yunus himself. (Again, if the government had even a shred of proof that he had invested his earnings outside of Bangladesh, it certainly would have produced that evidence by now.) The success of those initiatives, such as Grameen America, has created additional goodwill for the people of Bangladesh and for their creativity and industriousness. Professor Yunus owns no shares in any of these businesses, whether domestic or foreign. Clearly, the government does not know what to make of his laudable honesty and integrity. Instead, it further embarrasses itself before the international community.
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