Authoritarianism threatens a Nobel winner

A wave of authoritarianism and suppression of dissent is cresting across the globe from regimes both left and right. It has caught in its wake a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has done as much as anyone to reduce poverty and encourage entrepreneurialism around the world. 

He is Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi who shared the Nobel Prize in 2006 with the lending institution he founded, Grameen Bank. The prize was for the work he did in launching microfinancing programs in his South Asian country. Some 98 percent of Grameen Bank borrowers are women, who are also the bank’s dominant shareholders. 

Yunus, now 82 years old, is often called the father of microcredit. He calls his startups “social businesses” — enterprises that produce income and profits while also working for the common good.  

Yunus has sponsored programs and spawned imitators around the world — including in New York City — that help poor women start and finance small businesses in every industry from furniture-making to weaving. He is a huge advocate of taking minimal profits and plowing surpluses from his enterprises into new microcredit programs, so more people can extract themselves from poverty.

Unfortunately, Yunus has gotten himself crossways with an increasingly authoritarian and corrupt government.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is a woman who rules from the left but who has also opened up her country economically. Through four parliamentary terms, Hasina has helped guide Bangladesh upward from the bottom rung of poor countries. The United Nations projects that Bangladesh will graduate into the ranks of middle-income developing countries by 2026. 

Her nation and government also shelter almost a million Rohingya refugees driven out of the violence in next door Myanmar — a considerable burden. Hasina is also one of the longest-serving female heads of government in the world, which is no small feat. 

But Hasina, the daughter of the country’s revered founder, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, has been backsliding badly on democracy in recent years. She increasingly suppresses opposition parties, stifles dissent, imposes restrictions on the media and disappears political opponents. International organizations have also expressed doubts about the fairness of the last two elections in Bangladesh.

Like all authoritarians, Hasina cannot stand sharing the limelight with anyone. And in recent years she has cast her shade on Yunus, whom she wrongly views as a potential electoral rival. In speeches over the years, she has called him a “usurer,” a “cheat” and worse.

Yunus did briefly flirt with starting a political party and running for office in 2007, but then he withdrew, stating that politics was not for him. She has nonetheless been badgering him ever since. 

In a recent speech, Hasina threatened to dunk Yunus in the Padma River, asserting that Yunus somehow maneuvered the World Bank in 2012 into withdrawing financing for a crucial bridge over that key waterway in Bangladesh.  

“He should be plunged into the Padma River twice. He should just be plunged in a bit and then pulled up so that he does not die, and then pulled up onto the bridge. That perhaps will teach him a lesson,” Hasina said. 

The World Bank says it withdrew from the bridge project because of corruption. The government ultimately built the bridge without World Bank funds, using its own money and a Chinese construction company. 

The Hasina government’s anti-corruption agency has been besieging the Grameen Bank, the Grameen Telecom company, and Yunus’s personal and family trusts with subpoenas in an effort to find something that will tarnish him. The Bangladesh high court recently imposed fines on Yunus for failing to pay taxes on donations.

People close to Yunus fear for his safety and freedom because of Hasina’s dunking speech and the escalating public and legal harassment.  

A group of six Republican congressmen has come forward with concerns about the deterioration of democracy in Bangladesh. Led by Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Bob Good (R-Va.), they recently sent a letter to the State Department urging stronger visa sanctions on individuals within Bangladesh and a possible ban on Bangladeshi soldiers serving in U.N. peacekeeping battalion — a major source of income and prestige for Dhaka.  

The U.S. government is monitoring the worsening human rights situation in Bangladesh. The Treasury Department in 2021 imposed financial sanctions on several current and former members of Hasina’s Rapid Action Battalion, an anti-terrorist military force that is accused of involvement in disappearances and extra-judicial killings in Bangladesh.  

Senior State Department officials are aware of this persecution of Yunus. But the U.S. is treading lightly in Bangladesh. Dhaka is being wooed by China, and Bangladesh continues to need help with the Rohingya refugees. The competition is on: The two top foreign investors in Bangladesh consistently are China and the U.S. 

Still, Sheik Hasina needs to be warned about her treatment of Yunus, as well as her growing restrictions on democracy, human rights and civil liberties in Bangladesh. She has kept her country economically stable, but now she is threatening a Nobel Peace Prize winner whose life has been dedicated to helping people lift themselves out of poverty. Her course of action is wrongheaded and dangerous.  

Patrick Pexton teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.