Yunus says 'big powers' want to erase 'new Bangladesh'

New Delhi: After the deposed prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, accused him of masterminding the massacre of people in Bangladesh, the head of the South Asian nation’s interim government, Muhammad Yunus, on Wednesday alleged that some “big powers” were running false propaganda to undo the changes that the “uprising by the students and masses” brought about in the country this year.

“We created a free and independent Bangladesh through an uprising,” Yunus said, referring to the July-August 2024 protests by the students and youths against reservation in jobs in Bangladesh. “They want to erase it and return to the past.”

Yunus did not directly refer to India, although New Delhi’s statements expressing concerns over the persecution of Hindus and other minorities in Bangladesh of late added to the strains in its relations with the interim government in Dhaka.

He said that the “campaign against new Bangladesh” was no longer limited to Bangladesh, but had spread outside as well, involving some “big countries”.

“Now, we have to tell the entire world that we are one. We achieved together what we got. This now became the issue of our existence,” Yunus said at a meeting with the leaders of different political parties in Dhaka on Wednesday.

The comment of the ‘chief advisor’ – equivalent to the prime minister – of the interim government in Dhaka came just days after Hasina, who flew from Bangladesh to India on August 5, virtually addressed an event in New York. She accused Yunus and the students, who led and coordinated the protests against the reservation in government jobs, of masterminding the massacre of people.

“Today, I am being accused of genocide. In reality, Yunus has been involved in genocide in a meticulously designed manner. The masterminds – the student coordinators and Yunus -- are behind this genocide,” she said.

Hasina had flown to the Indian Air Force base at Hindon in the National Capital Region of India just hours before her official residence – Gana Bhavan – had been stormed by hundreds of protesters. Yunus had taken over as the chief advisor of the interim government three days later.

“The armed protestors were directed towards Gana Bhaban (the official residence of the prime minister) in Dhaka. If the security guards opened fire, many lives would have been lost. It was a matter of 25-30 minutes, and I was forced to leave. I told them [guards] not to fire, no matter what happened,” the Awami League chief and the former prime minister said referring to the storming of her official residence in Dhaka on August 5.

Hasina accused the interim government led by Yunus in Dhaka of failing to protect the minorities. “Hindus, Buddhists, Christians – no one has been spared. Eleven churches have been razed, and temples of the Hindus and Buddhists have been damaged. When the Hindus protested, the ISKCON leader was arrested,” she said referring to the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das.

“What is this persecution of minorities for? Why are they being ruthlessly persecuted and attacked?” she said in her first public address after coming to India from Bangladesh. “People no longer have the right to justice... I didn’t even have the time to resign.”

She also claimed that a plan had been hatched to assassinate her and her sister Sheikh Rehana just as their father and the founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the other members of her family had been killed in 1975.

"The Bangladesh we are aiming to build is being overshadowed by a fabricated narrative. They are relentlessly outlining a different version of our country," he said, adding that the misinformation was being generated not from just one country, but certain major global powers too had got involved in it.