Complicity of Muhammed Yunus in Bangladesh mobocracy

Bangladesh stares at long stint of mob rule

By Manish Anand

New Delhi, September 7: The Bangladesh media is evidently fear-stricken. A scroll of two Bangladeshi media houses – Dhaka Tribune and Daily Star – gives no accounts of lynching of Hindu youths.

Professor Arifa Rahman Ruma of Dhaka Open University summed up despair in Bangladesh yesterday when it marked a month since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina-led dispensation from the Islamic country. “Freedom to lynch and freedom of expression of the killer — that’s the new reality in Bangladesh. Authority is silent and so are electronic and print media,” she posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Chief Advisor of the Interim Government of Bangladesh Muhammed Yunus marked a month of the violent overthrow of Hasina regime with a two-hour session with editors of Bangladeshi dailies. Mahfuz Anam, Editor of Daily Star, heaped praise on Yunus for allowing access to the media to the highest authority which had been missing for past several years.

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Anam wrote a long praise-only piece on the meeting of editors with Yunus. The lynching of the Hindu youth found no mention in the conversation of the editors with Yunus.

“As editors, we obviously focused a lot on the current harassment of journalists and strongly protested the recklessness with which media professionals were being charged with murder without a shred of evidence. This is giving a wrong signal to the media in the country and is damaging the image of the interim government to the world,” Anam claimed to have told Yunus during the conversation.

Anam’s account on media harassment possibly explains why the Bangladeshi newspapers have backed out incidents of lynching of Hindu youths. They widely covered the ‘India Out’ march from Comilla on the monthly anniversary of the ouster of the Hasina regime.

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“A youth, Utsob Mondol, has been lynched inside a police station for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad. The main reason of this brutality was that his name belongs to the persecuted Hindu community who are bearing the brunt of the authority in power. A hapless Bangladesh is a silent witness,” rued Professor Ruma.

The violent students had burnt down the Dhaka Press Club while also attacking the media outlets. Yunus is by all accounts a titular head of Bangladesh. Evidence suggests that Bangladesh has fallen to a mob.

Even the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) of Khalida Zia is dreadful of an early election. She is showing signs of dread from rampaging mob in Bangladesh.

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Local media reports quoted the BNP telling Yunus to take “as much time as possible” to hold elections. Anam gave an account of Yunus probing the media heads about the length of time that he should take to hold elections.

The editors suggested that he can think of one to three years. “The interim government should first set out its agenda and use that to determine the time it needed, and not go the other way of allowing the specificity of time to determine it agenda,” Anam quoted the editors telling Yunus.

A long list of items on agenda was suggested to Yunus. “Building independent institutions, including the elections commission, should be the priority of Interim Government,” suggested the editors to Yunus.

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A close scrutiny of the conversations of Yunus with Bangladesh media editors suggests that the mobocracy may rule the country for a much longer time frame. The media is too fear stricken to spotlight the rise of a Taliban-like Street thugs in Bangladesh.

Yunus also gives an account of timidity, for he accepted the position to head the Interim Government without putting condition to swiftly punish the blood thirsty mob. That makes Yunus complicit in perpetuating mobocracy in Bangladesh.

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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