Bangladesh court jails Nobel laureate Yunus for labour law violation

Nobel peace laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and three other Grameen Telecom officials were convicted on Monday of labour law violation and sentenced to simple imprisonment for six months, reported New Age, a leading English language newspaper published from Dhaka.

The Dhaka Labour Court also fined Yunus, the chairman of Grameen Telecom, one of social business firms the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner founded, its former managing director Ashraful Hasan, and directors Nur Jahan Begum and Mohammad Shahjahan Tk 30,000 each.

The court also ordered that they would need to serve 25 more days in jail for failure to pay the fine.

Yunus and his three colleagues, however, did not go to jail immediately as the court granted them bail for one month pending appeal to the higher court following their petitions.

After the verdict, 83-year-old Yunus told reporters, “I was punished for an offence that I did not commit. If you want to call it justice, you can.”

“Today is the first day of the English New Year. The whole world celebrates this day. Everyone celebrates it as a day of joy, but we have come to court today to hear the verdict. The sorrow remained in our hearts today. I received this pain on this happy day,” said Yunus.

Yunus´s lawyer said that an appeal would be filed challenging the verdict.

The court convicted Yunus and his three colleagues of violating labour laws for failure to create a workers participation fund and a workers’ welfare fund and to deposit 5 per cent of the profits to the workers welfare fund.

They were also convicted of failure to make final appointment of the Grammen Telecom workers after the conclusion of the apprenticeship, and not giving the annual leave, encashment of leave, and cash payment against leave to workers or employees.