Why Muhammad Yunus should reconsider his interim role – Firstpost

My only trip to Bangladesh was in December 2008. I was an election observer for the Washington-based International Republican Institute, assigned to Chittagong. Back in Dhaka, I attended a rally for Sheikh Hasina and had the opportunity to talk to her staff afterwards. It was a time of hope, but the nation’s sadness was palpable. The legacy of the 1971 war remained, and as I moved between political parties, I heard complaints about “war criminals” like Jamaat-e-Islami who sided with the Pakistani military as it carried out its genocide against the Bengalis.

In the West, many analysts have portrayed the coup against Sheikh Hasina as a revenge of Generation Z. Sheikh Hasina has become increasingly autocratic, and her attempts to suppress protests with brute force have backfired. But the aftermath of the coup shows that the spirit of genocide is growing just beneath the surface in Generation Z Bangladesh.

Islamists and opportunistic youth have launched a pogrom against Bangladesh’s small Hindu community, kidnapping, selling and raping women in scenes reminiscent of the Islamic State’s attack on the Yazidi population of Sinjar, Iraq. Religious freedom is a true reflection of a government’s commitment to liberalism and democracy. In retrospect, Sheikh Hasina was a finger in the dam. Today’s crowds show that their vision of the future is not much different from Pakistan’s vision of 1971.

Radicals also lynched actor Shanto Khan and his father, Selim Khan, a prominent Tollywood producer. Their crime? Selim produced “Tungi Parar Miya Bhai”, based on the life story of Sheikh Hasina’s father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. It is reminiscent of how, after taking power in Cairo, the Muslim Brotherhood sought to prosecute Adel Emam, whose 1994 film “Terrorist” ridiculed the cynicism, ignorance, and power-obsession of Egyptian Islamists, initially sentencing him (in absentia) to three months in prison. President Mohamed Morsi failed to appreciate that his actions simply confirmed everything Emam had done. Targeting artists shows absolute contempt for free speech. Authoritarians use force to suppress speech only when they fear it. By lynching the khans, the Bangladeshi revolutionaries signal revenge, not the ideology that motivates them, and they lack the intellectual capacity to defend their own positions and beliefs. They are autocrats whose thin veneer of idealism is false.

The same movement invited Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, 84, to return as interim leader, which Yunus accepted. While Yunus’s appointment signals moderation from the international community, where Yunus is popular, he should have reconsidered or at least conditioned his acceptance. One suspects that his acceptance as head of the interim government may have covered up the worst abuses and perhaps lent his name to the accession of an authoritarian regime.

Instead, Yunus should have made his acceptance conditional on the willingness of the revolutionaries and the student movement to bring justice to those who attack Hindu and other minority communities, and to those who lynch artists simply because they don’t like their films. Yunus was right to ask for an end to violence against minorities, or he would resign. But Yunus had to consider, and the international community has to consider: Will he really have an impact, or will his legacy become a cover for a new generation of autocrats and religious chauvinists?

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. The views expressed in the article above are the author’s alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.