Bangladesh protesters want Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to lead government

Key organisers of Bangladesh’s student protests have said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus should head an interim government after longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country.

Nahid Islam, a 26-year-old sociology student who spearheaded the protest movement against quotas in government jobs that morphed into a national uprising against the administration, said in a video post on social media that Yunus had consented to take over.

“We want to see the process rolling by the morning,” Islam said late on Monday. “We urge the president to take steps as soon as possible to form an interim government headed by Dr Yunus.”

The protest organisers were scheduled to meet army officials on Tuesday, the army said in a statement.

Islam said the students would not accept an army-led government.

“We have given our blood, been martyred, and we have to fulfil our pledge to build a new Bangladesh,” he said.

“No government other than the one proposed by the students will be accepted. As we have said, no military government, or one backed by the military, or a government of fascists, will be accepted.”

Yunus, 84, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 after he pioneered microlending. Known as the “banker to the poor”, he faced corruption accusations in Bangladesh and was put on trial during Hasina’s rule, but maintained the charges against him were politically motivated.

A spokesperson for Yunus said he had accepted the students’ request to be an adviser to the interim government, the Reuters news agency reported. The Nobel laureate would return to Bangladesh “immediately” after a minor medical procedure in Paris, the spokesperson was quoted as saying.

Reporting from Dhaka, Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury said calm appeared to have largely been restored in the capital on Tuesday as the Students Against Discrimination movement called for calm, despite some lingering tensions.

Chowdhury said the movement would put forward more names on Tuesday morning and that their “key demand” had clearly been framed as non-negotiable. “Unless those names are accepted, the students might come out again,” he said.

Following the removal of Hasina on Monday, army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said he was temporarily taking control of the country as soldiers tried to stem the growing unrest.

He said he had held talks with leaders of major political parties – excluding Hasina’s long-ruling Awami League – and announced that an interim government would run Bangladesh.

He also promised to investigate the deaths of at least 135 people across Bangladesh since mid-July in some of the country’s worst bloodshed since the 1971 war of independence. “Keep faith in the military. We will investigate all the killings and punish the responsible,” he said.

Mohammed Shahabuddin, the country’s figurehead president, announced that the interim government would hold new elections as soon as possible.

He said that it was “unanimously decided” to immediately release the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson and Hasina’s nemesis, Begum Khaleda Zia, who was convicted in a corruption case in 2018 but moved to a hospital a year later as her health deteriorated. She has denied the charges against her.

The United Nation’s human rights chief, Volker Turk, said the transition of power in Bangladesh must be “in line with the country’s international obligations” and “inclusive and open to the meaningful participation of all Bangladeshis”.

The protests began peacefully last month as frustrated students demanded an end to a quota system for government jobs that they said favoured those with connections to the Hasina’s Awami League party.

They then morphed into an unprecedented challenge to Hasina, amid a harsh crackdown by police, highlighting the extent of economic distress in the country.

On Monday, protesters defied a military curfew to march into the capital’s centre, setting fire to Hasina’s official residence and massing outside the parliament building, where a banner reading “justice” was hung.

Crowds also ransacked Hasina’s family ancestral home-turned-museum where her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – the country’s first president and independence leader – was assassinated.

Hasina, meanwhile, landed at a military airfield near New Delhi and met India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, according to Indian media reports, which also said that she was taken to a safe house and was likely to travel to the United Kingdom.

Indian media reported that the government will hold an emergency meeting at parliament house on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Bangladesh.

Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she step down.