DHAKA: Forty global figures, including Ban Ki-moon, Hillary Clinton and Bono published a joint letter on Wednesday calling upon 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 says he is “sucking blood” from the poor.

Bangladesh’s anti-graft watchdog ordered a wide-ranging probe last year into firms Yunus chairs and Hasina has attacked him personally, blaming him for the World Bank pulling out from a bridge project that was mired in corruption allegations.

The letter signed by former UN chief Ban Ki-moon, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, U2 singer Bono, former US vice president Al Gore and others said that 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, which was also published in the Washington Post.

There was no immediate comment from the government.

Bangladesh’s anti-corruption commission is winding up its investigations into Yunus and his social business firms, a senior ACC official said on Wednesday.

“We are analysing thousands of documents,” he said.

Yunus, 82, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, has seen his reputation at home tarnished by a labour dispute with Hasina, who critics accuse of becoming incre­asingly authoritarian.

He was forced from his position as Grameen Bank’s managing director in 2011 in a move his supporters blamed on the conflict. His interests include a multi-billion dollar stake in the country’s largest mobile phone operator.

The bridge near Dhaka was finally opened in June after years of construction delays, and Hasina took the occasion to say Yunus should be “dipped in a river” for jeopardising its completion.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2023