Bangladesh PM Hasina distances herself from Nobel laureate Yunus’ sentencing by labour court

Newly-elected Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina distanced herself from the sentencing of the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to six months in jail

Newly-elected Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on January 8 distanced herself from the sentencing of the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to six months in jail for violating the country's labour laws.

Ms. Hasina was addressing a range of questions in her first press conference soon after winning a consecutive fourth term with a landslide victory in Sunday’s polls boycotted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the primary opposition party.

“About Yunus, it is the labour court. The people from his own company, they were discharged, and they filed a case in labour court. He violated the labour law and deprived his own employees, they filed the case and on that, they got the judgment. I have nothing to do with that,” Ms. Hasina answered emphatically.

“The question of troubling him has come to me, rather you should ask him, his own employees and you should speak to him about the labour,” the 76-year-old Prime Minister said.

On January 1, a labour court in Bangladesh's capital sentenced the Nobel Peace Prize winner to six months of jail for violating the country's labour laws but granted bail giving him 30 days to appeal against the verdict and sentence.

Pioneering the use of microcredit to help impoverished people, Grameen Telecom, which Yunus founded as a non-profit organisation, is at the centre of the case.