nayeemul-islam-khan

When your position is indefensible, there are basically two options: concede, or lie. As we wrote earlier, apologists for the Prime Minister have consistently taken the second option. For example, they claimed that the Washington Post ad in support of Professor Yunus placed almost exactly one year ago cost $2 million when public documents prove that it could have cost no more than $84,000. (In fact, it cost much less than at, as we explained in this blog post.)

Now, Nayeemul Islam Khan, one of the Prime Minister’s top attack dogs, claims without a shred of evidence that most of the Nobel laureates who signed the open letter to the PM about her persecution of Professor Yunus did so unwittingly. On a television program, he claimed that they were sent messages that said unless they responded otherwise, their names would be added to the letter. This is absolutely false. Those of us who waited anxiously to hear who agreed to sign and who did not, this absurd charge is somewhere between infuriating and laughable.

Mr. Khan, let us ask you this: If we added scores of Nobel laureates without their permission, wouldn’t at least one of them publicly disassociated themselves from the effort and have asked that their names be removed? Of course. But not a single one has. While you are at it, Mr. Khan, please produce one of those messages to a Nobel laureate that told them that their name would be added unless to responded otherwise — just one, please!

And how do you explain the fact that the Protect Yunus Campaign added names of Nobel laureates and other global leaders after the original publication of the letters? If we included everyone who didn’t decline to sign in the original letter, there would be no one to add later on. In fact, we only added people who agreed to sign, and those who agreed after publication of the letter were added after that fact.

If the government and its allies won’t stop persecuting Professor Yunus, perhaps they can at least agree to stop lying about their efforts to do so.