Monica Yunus, daughter of Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour
'Allegations against my father completely baseless'
Monica Yunus, daughter of Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus, spoke with CNN's Christiane Amanpour yesterday about her father facing judicial action in Bangladesh.
In an interview with the CNN chief international anchor, Monica said, "Bangladesh is trying to imprison my father on sham charges.
"I think it's imperative for me to speak out to join the chorus of the many, many luminaries who have signed this letter [Around 150 Nobel laureates and world leaders in different sectors have issued an open letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year expressing concern over the case against Yunus] in support of him. These charges against him and those of his colleagues are absolutely false and it is important for me to speak out against it."
Upon being asked about the kind of charges, she added, "So the charges are really civil in nature, it's an employment issue -- something that would normally be dealt with in the civil court, it's been criminalised. There is absolutely no sense to them." She further said, "The real charges carry a prison sentence, and that's the problem."
When questioned about the legitimacy of the civil charges, she said, "No, they are absolutely not, he and his colleagues are 100 percent innocent. You don't have to take his daughter's word for it. There are international lawyers who have looked at it and they are absolutely false."
Being questioned about her expectations from the Bangladesh government, she explained, "My fondest wish is for all the charges to be dropped, not just for my father but his colleagues. This is absolutely false and I would love for the offer that she [Sheikh Hasina] made, she has told reporters that she would bring in international lawyers, she would welcome international lawyers and experts to come in and evaluate the situation and I feel 100 percent confident that all of these would be absolutely erased if that happened because there is no guilt."
When asked about the alleged claims of her father becoming a politician and forming his own party, she said, "He is not a politician, I think he thought about it for a moment after he had received the Nobel Peace Prize. I think he was a party of one. He has no political aspirations. It's something that, you know, we have talked about and this keeps coming up. But it has no validity."
Being asked about the ambiguity of the situation she further added, "I wish I knew; I really do. I think at one point, you know, they worked well together. And my wish is that it could come back not only for the benefit of all the Grameen organisations, the Grameen Bank he founded, Grameen meaning "village" bank, that is so much about microcredit and empowering the poorest, the poorest of the poor, specifically poor women. I think that if given the opportunity to work together again, that would be wonderful. There's so much in civil society in Bangladesh, there are so many people working to keep Bangladesh at the highest level -- sort of the beacon of economic development. That's what could be focused on. That's what should be focused on. I am an American citizen, but I was born in Bangladesh. I've been to Bangladesh. The creativity, the innovation, it's why people keep going back, because they're charmed by all of the innovation that can come out of that, and that is a testament to the country and to the flourishing civil society."
Asked to talk about her father pioneering the idea of microcredit, micro loans -- an easily available and known aspect around the world, Monica Yunus added, "So he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, alongside Grameen bank, which is the institution he created -- village bank, which focuses on everything that a traditional bank doesn't. So if in a traditional bank, you give loans to people with collateral, in Grameen Bank, you give small loans for income-generating activities to the poorest of the poor, focusing on mostly women."
After showcasing a video of Muhammad Yunus talking about how Grameen Bank has changed lives, she exuberantly added, "I love that specifically, I was smiling because, you know, that's 20 years ago so those children have grown up and they've come to my father and said, ok, great, I have this wonderful education, what now? Where do I go to work? My mother did all of this, how can I become, you know, how can I do even better? So, they go for higher education. There's a higher education loan. They go to become doctors. This was impossible 20 or 30 years ago."
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She also said he did not just throw money at people.
When she was asked about the figure of repayment and why women were the ones given the credit, she replied, "So at the very beginning, there were loans given to men and what they found was men did not spend the money on the family. They did not spend it on the women and the family. So, they began to really focus their attention on women, there is a very high repayment rate, something like 98 percent. Women repay. Women pay back. They take out larger loans, they make a larger business... they get involved. They become empowered by this."
On the criticism about microcredit putting women in debt that they spend the whole life repaying, Monica added, "I am not an expert, but to me it's very simple. If you don't use this model that has been set, and there's a very specific model, it can fail, of course, it's just like anything. If you set something up and it doesn't follow a certain set of rules, it's not going to work as well. So, I think the criticism is probably from people who didn't necessarily follow the structure that Grameen set out."
When asked why Muhammad Yunus is being persecuted at the age of 83, she said, "I wish I knew the answer to that. He, you know, worked with this government and I think that it's an opportunity to work together again instead of wasting time in these frivolous, erroneous, egregious cases against him in a kind of harassment that's persisted now for over 10 years."
Being asked about Yunus beating this, she expressed, "I hope so. As a daughter looking at this, I don't relish the idea of my 83-year-old father, who is very healthy and strong... but the idea of him going to jail is not what I want."
In Bangladesh, the opposition parties claim that their 2.5 million members are facing charges. When asked to talk about this from an American citizen's perspective, she replied, "Well, I can say that it's very concerning that all other political parties boycotted this election. You know, what does that say about democracy when there's one person running? And again, from my perspective, Amnesty International is weighing in. The International Bar Association for Human Rights. The UN High Secretary for Human Rights, they're all weighing in saying this is concerning."
"He's worked his whole life for this vision of creating a world without poverty. That vision was started in Bangladesh with many colleagues who he still works with. So it's not just their work that's at stake, it's thousands of people who have made this dream of a world without poverty, they continue to do that. So why should he leave his country that he loves so much?"
Emphasising on Yunus being the first Bangladeshi ever to win the Nobel Prize, she added, "Yeah, I mean he's won… honestly, I can't keep track, Christiane. He's won the Nobel Peace Prize, he's one of the only seven people in the world to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and Medal of Freedom. The last two given by the United States government. He has, I think, something like 60 honorary doctorates from around the world, no pressure as his daughter, really."