Global Leaders Showing Concern on Professor Yunus harassment

Forty global figures, including Ban Ki-moon, Hillary Clinton, and Bono, published a joint letter calling Bangladesh to stop ‘unfair’ attacks and harassment of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Yunus is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering micro-credit bank, but he has fallen out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has said he is ‘sucking blood’ from the poor.
Last year, the anti-graft watchdog ordered a wide-ranging probe into the firm Yunus. Co. Hasina has made personal attacks on him and said that he was to blame for the World Bank pulling out of a bridge project because of allegations of corruption.
The letter signed by former UN chief Ban, former US secretary of state Clinton, U2 singer Bono, former US vice president Al Gore, and others said they had ‘deep concerns’ about Yunus’s ‘well-being’ and ability to focus on his work.
‘It is ... painful to see Prof. Yunus, a man of impeccable integrity, and his life’s work unfairly attacked and repeatedly harassed and investigated by your government,’ they said in the letter, also published in the Washington Post newspaper.
There was no immediate comment from the government.
Bangladesh’s state-run Anti-Corruption Commission is winding up its investigations into Yunus and his social business firms, a senior ACC official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
‘We are analyzing thousands of documents,’ he said.
Yunus, 82, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, has seen his reputation at home tarnished by a labor dispute with Hasina, whom critics accuse of becoming increasingly authoritarian.
He was forced from his position as Grameen Bank’s managing director in 2011, a move his supporters blamed on the conflict. His interests include a multibillion-dollar stake in the country’s largest mobile phone operator.
The bridge near Dhaka was finally opened in June after years of construction delays. Hasina said Yunus should be ‘dipped in a river’ for jeopardizing its completion.