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Modi ignored pleas to restrain Hasina: Yunus
Yunus, who was speaking at Chatham House in London, said efforts will continue to seek Hasina’s extradition from India
New Delhi Bangladesh interim government chief Muhammad Yunus contended on Wednesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi brushed aside his request to prevent former prime minister Sheikh Hasina from making political statements from Indian soil.
Yunus, who was speaking at Chatham House in London, said efforts will continue to seek Hasina’s extradition from India so that she can face charges in Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, which recently indicted her for ordering a police crackdown on protestors last year.
There was no immediate response from Indian officials to the remarks made by Yunus during the interactive session at the British think tank. Hasina fled to India last August after her government collapsed in the face of widespread protests by student groups. India has not responded to a request made by Bangladesh’s interim government last December for extraditing Hasina.
Yunus said he sought Modi’s help to stop Hasina from making political statements from Indian soil when the two leaders held a bilateral meeting on the margins of a Bimstec Summit in Bangkok in April.
“When I had a chance to talk to Prime Minister Modi, I simply said you want to host her, I cannot force you to abandon that policy. But please help us in making sure she doesn’t speak to Bangladeshi people the way she is doing,” Yunus said while responding to a question from the audience.
“She announces on such and such day and at such and such hour she will speak and the whole of Bangladesh gets very angry,” he added.
Asked by the moderator if India was doing what he had asked, Yunus replied: “No. Modi’s answer [and] I quote, he said it is the social media, we cannot control it. What can you say? This is an explosive situation, you can’t just walk away by saying this is social media. This is what is still going on.”
Yunus said his administration will continue efforts to seek Hasina’s extradition following her indictment by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal.
“This will continue…another stage has come, now there is a case. The International Crimes Tribunal has started the trial process, they sent notices to Hasina for all the crimes she has committed…So, they have to respond to the notices,” he said.
“This is a legal notice, so we have to go to the Interpol and all the other things that happen through that. This is the process that we are following, we want it to be very legal, very proper.”
Yunus also spoke about how his desire to build the “best of relationships with India” is being thwarted by “fake news in the Indian press”.
“We want to build the best of relationships with India, it’s our neighbour. We don’t want to have any kind of basic problem with them. But somehow things go wrong every time because of all the fake news coming from the Indian press and many people say it has connections with policy-makers at the top and so on,” he said.
“This is what makes Bangladesh very jittery, very angry. We try to get over this anger but…the whole barrage of things keep happening in cyberspace, we can’t get away from that,” he said.
India-Bangladesh relations have been in free-fall since the interim administration led by Yunus assumed office last August. New Delhi has frequently criticised the caretaker government for failing to tackle the repression of Bangladesh’s religious minorities and for giving a free hand to radical and extremist forces. Yunus has described the allegations as “exaggerated”.
