Muhammad Yunus heads home to lead Bangladesh interim government (2024)

Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace laureate tapped to lead an interim government in Bangladesh, has called for calm as he boarded a flight to return home, a day before his new government is expected to be sworn in to replace deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Yunus, 84, was picked by President Mohammed Shahabuddin to lead the new interim government, a key demand of student demonstrators whose uprising drove Hasina, 76, to flee to India on Monday.

“I am looking forward to going back home, see what’s happening and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble we are in,” he told reporters before boarding a flight at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport for Dubai where he was to connect to Dhaka.

“I fervently appeal to everybody to stay calm. Please refrain from all kinds of violence,” said Yunus, an economist and banker who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to the general populace.

He has been hailed for bringing thousands out of poverty through Grameen Bank, which he founded in 1983, and which makes small loans to businesspeople who would not qualify for regular bank loans.

Bangladesh’s military chief said on Wednesday the interim government headed by Yunus would be sworn in on Thursday night after he returns from Paris to take over the administration and try to restore stability.

General Waker-Uz-Zaman said in a televised address on Wednesday afternoon that those responsible for the violence since Hasina’s resignation would be brought to justice.

The military chief, flanked by the chiefs of navy and air force, said he spoke to Yunus and would receive him at the airport on Thursday.

Zaman said he was hopeful that Yunus would take the situation to a “beautiful democratic” process.

Hasina, who had been in power since 2009, resigned on Monday as hundreds of thousands of people, most of them students, flooded the streets of Dhaka demanding she stand down.

The protests that began over a controversial quota in government jobs soon transformed into a call for an end to Hasina’s 15-year rule, which many in the country called “autocratic”.

More than 400 people were killed during weeks of clashes between the protesters and the security forces as well as members of Hasina’s Awami League party.

President Shahabuddin on Wednesday also announced the appointment of a new police chief, Mohammad Mainul Islam, to replace Chowdhury Abdullah Al Mamun as part of a shake-up of the security top brass that also included a new head of the technical intelligence monitoring agency and changes among senior army officials.

After his appointment, Islam offered an apology for the conduct of officers during deadly protests and vowed an “impartial” probe into the killings.

“We are committed to conduct a fair and impartial investigation into every recent killing of students, common people and the police,” he told reporters.

“In the current protests… our previous responsible officials were not able to fulfil their duties as per the expectations of the countrymen,” he added.

“I, as the chief of police, apologise on behalf of the Bangladesh Police for that.”

He also said he had asked police units to end their strike and return to duty on Thursday, when Yunus is set to return to the country to lead the caretaker government.

Also on Wednesday, the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), buoyed by its chief and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s release from house arrest on Tuesday, drew hundreds of people to a rally in Dhaka and demanded elections within three months.

In her first public speech since 2018, when she was convicted of corruption charges and jailed, Zia urged all not to follow the path of destruction in Bangladesh as she addressed her supporters from a hospital bed at a rally in Dhaka.

“No destruction, no anger, and no revenge, we need love and peace to rebuild our country,” Zia, 78, said using a videolink.

“I have been released now. I want to thank the brave people who were in a do-or-die struggle to make possible the impossible,” she said.

“This victory brings us a new possibility to come back from the debris of plunder, corruption and ill-politics. We need to reform this country as a prosperous one.”

Meanwhile, before the arrival of Yunus, a court in Bangladesh overturned his conviction in a labour case in which he was handed a six-month jail sentence in January. Yunus had called his prosecution political, part of a campaign by Hasina to quash dissent.

“Let us make the best use of our new victory,” he said in a statement before departing Paris, where he had been receiving medical treatment while out on bail.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies