Michael Rubin
In 2006, Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said it awarded them the prize “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” Yunus’ work was path-breaking; it enabled tens of thousands of Bangladeshis to lift themselves out of poverty.
There is a syndrome among Nobel Peace Laureates in which the prize—the ultimate virtue signal by a group of five Norwegian politicians—corrupts winners. Rather than spread peace, the winners use their status as a Nobel Peace Prize winner to justify personal vendettas, policy agendas, or unbridled quest for power.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, for example, used his Nobel Prize to shield himself, at least initially, as he waged a war of genocide against his country’s Tigrayans, both in Tigray itself and in the capital Addis Ababa.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee openly said they selected Tawakkol Karman for the 2011 Nobel Prize because it wanted to normalize the Muslim Brotherhood with whom her political party affiliated.
She approached peace and human rights as a two-tiered system, however: She advocated for Islamists but ignored victims who did not share her faith. Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won the prize in 1991 for her supposed non-violent commitment to democracy and human rights but, once in power, she remained silent as the Burmese military repressed minority Rohingya Muslims, perhaps even tacitly endorsing the genocide.
Yunus now joins this shameful group.
After Bangladeshi protestors forced the increasingly autocratic Sheikh Hasina to step down in August 2024, the 84-year-old Yunus—perhaps Bangladesh’s most famous face on the international stage—accepted the position of chief advisor, basically an interim head of state who serves following the fall of one elected government and until elections usher in a legitimate government.
Many in the West consider Yunus a progressive, yet he now acts decidedly illiberally. That he provides cover for Jamaat-e-Islami, a hardline Islamist group, as it launches pogroms against Bangladesh’s minority communities and seeks to impose strict religious diktats on society. Sheikh Hasina’s secular Awami League grew more dictatorial with time, but Jamaat-e-Islami espouses an even more authoritarian vision.
Yunus is hardly a neutral arbiter. He once considered challenging the Awami League politically, and also likely bears a grudge after Sheikh Hasina’s government launched a number of probes into alleged corruption at the Grameen Bank, none of which the international community believed to have merit. That his regime targets prominent civil society members and advocates for religious tolerance with baseless murder is morally inverse.
The persecution of Fazle Karim Chowdhury, a respected leader from Bangladesh and steadfast advocate for human rights and minority protection, must cease. Chowdhury’s real sin appears to be that his constituency Raozan had become a haven for Bangladesh’s Hindu community.
Yunus’ actions today are reminiscent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s persecution of Alevis, Christians, and Yezidis or Syrian Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham leader Ahmad al-Sharaa’s militias recent slaughter of unarmed Syrian Alawis.
Diplomats can debate Yunus’ naivete or culpability as he provides cover for Jamaat-e-Islami and groups that openly embrace Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but they should not rationalize his persecution of journalists.
Consider the case of Farzana Rupa and Shakil Ahmed, both highly professional freelancers who often reported on behalf of European outlets. Yunus’ government has baselessly imprisoned them on murder charges and then denied any contact between them and their minor daughter.
Their case is now the rule rather than the exception, as Yunus’ government has fired more than 1,000 journalists deemed too secular for the new Islamist order. Julfikar Ali Manik, another prominent journalist whose bylines include the New York Times is a specialist in Islamist movements. He too has become a target of the Yunus government.
With Yunus following the trajectory of Erdogan and al-Sharaa, Bangladeshi civil society and journalists are in peril. Secretary of State Marco Rubio should no longer delay: It is time to slap Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on Muhammad Yunus; his Nobel Peace Prize should not become cover for pogroms, press repression, and a general erosion of human rights.
Michael Rubin
Senior Fellow