Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace laureate, was found guilty on Monday of breaching Bangladesh‘s labor laws in a case denounced by his followers as politically driven.
At 83, Yunus, renowned for elevating millions from poverty through his groundbreaking microfinance bank, faces opposition from longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who accuses him of “sucking blood” from the poor.
Sheikh Hasina has launched numerous scathing verbal assaults against the globally esteemed 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, who was previously viewed as a political adversary.
Yunus, along with three associates from Grameen Telecom, a firm he helped establish, found themselves accused of breaching labor laws due to the absence of a workers’ welfare fund.
Convicted by a labor court in Dhaka, they received a “six months’ simple imprisonment” sentence, according to Lead Prosecutor Khurshid Alam Khan speaking to AFP. All four were granted bail immediately, pending appeals.
Despite the charges, all four vehemently deny any wrongdoing. Outside the court, dozens of people staged a modest rally in support of Yunus.
“ I have been punished for a crime that I haven’t committed,’ Yunus told reporters after the hearing.
‘If you want to call it justice, you can.’
Yunus is facing more than 100 other charges over labour law violations and alleged graft.
He told reporters after one of the hearings last month that he had not profited from any of the more than 50 social business firms he had set up in Bangladesh.
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‘They were not for my personal benefit,’ Yunus said at the time.
Another of his lawyers, Khaja Tanvir, told AFP that the case was “meritless, false, and ill-motivated.”
‘The sole aim of the case is to harass and humiliate him in front of the world,’ Tanvir said.
Irene Khan, once at the helm of Amnesty and now a UN special rapporteur, present at Monday’s verdict, denounced the conviction as “a travesty of justice” in comments to AFP.
‘A social activist and Nobel laureate who brought honour and pride to the country is being persecuted on frivolous grounds,’ she said.
Back in August, 160 prominent figures, among them former US president Barack Obama and ex-UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, issued a collective letter condemning the “persistent judicial harassment” of Yunus.
The signatories, including more than 100 of his fellow Nobel laureates, said they feared for “his safety and freedom.”
Detractors argue that Bangladeshi courts merely rubber-stamp decisions of Hasina’s government, which appears poised to secure another term in power during next week’s elections, despite being boycotted by the opposition.
Her administration’s increasingly stringent measures against political dissent have identified Yunus, a figure long favored by the Bangladeshi public, as a potential rival for years.
Amnesty International accused the government of “weaponising labour laws” when Yunus went to trial in September and called for an immediate end to his “harassment.”
Criminal proceedings against Yunus were ‘a form of political retaliation for his work and dissent,’ it said.