Bangladesh protesters call on Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to lead
Bangladesh’s parliament has been dissolved, paving the way for an interim government that protest leaders said should be led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh's Parliament has been dissolved, the president’s office said Tuesday, paving the way for an interim government that student protest leaders said should be led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Yunus, 84, who received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the use of microcredit to alleviate poverty, had faced a slew of what he says are politically motivated legal charges under the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who resigned and fled the country Monday after weeks of student-led protests in which hundreds of people were killed.
Though Hasina’s increasingly autocratic rule had strained relations with the United States and others, her ouster could deepen instability in the majority-Muslim South Asian nation of 170 million people, which struggles with poverty and high youth unemployment.
More than 100 people were killed in unrest across the country Monday, local media reported, in the deadliest day since the start of protests last month that are estimated to have killed more than 400 in total. On Monday evening, enraged people scaled and defaced a statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father and the country’s first president, who led the Bangladeshi independence movement against Pakistan in 1971.
Angry crowds that blamed police for the government’s violent crackdown on protesters surrounded a number of police stations in Dhaka, the capital, throwing stones and setting fires in a campaign police say has left them incapacitated. Homes, offices and businesses belonging to people viewed as Hasina supporters were also attacked.
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