Updates on unrest in Bangladesh: About 300 people have been killed and thousands injured in the violence.
Dhaka:
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was appointed chief adviser to Bangladesh's interim government on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
Muhammad Yunus was appointed president by Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin after he met with student leaders and leaders of the three armed forces, local media reported Tuesday night, citing a statement and officials from the president's office.
Student protesters threatened more demonstrations if parliament was not dissolved.
The movement that toppled Hasina emerged from protests against the imposition of quotas on public sector jobs for families of veterans of Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence. Critics saw this as a way to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.
About 300 people have been killed and thousands injured in violence that has raged in the country since July.
Here are the LIVE updates on the unrest in Bangladesh:
- The military-backed appointment of Yunus as interim leader of Bangladesh is a notable turn of events for the economist.
- In recent years, Yunus has spent much of his time in Dhaka courts, fighting some 200 charges against him and his associates, including allegations of money laundering and corruption.
- He and his supporters say Hasina's government was behind the legal push, perhaps seeing him as a threat to its power. She has denied the allegations.
- Yunus, 84, is best known as the founder of Grameen Bank and a pioneer in microcredit: providing small business loans to the world's poorest people, most of whom are women.
- Although he has spent much of his life in the public eye, politics is largely unexplored territory. In 2007, the government of Bangladesh collapsed and the military seized power.
- Yunus, who had never run for public office, considered founding a new party to fill the vacuum, but abandoned the idea within a few weeks.
- Bangladesh is pinning its hopes on one of the country's most acclaimed intellectuals to bring stability to a country scarred by coups and political unrest.
- Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on poverty reduction, was appointed head of a new interim government on Tuesday after Sheikh Hasina was suddenly ousted as prime minister this week.
- Although he largely stays out of politics, Yunus is one of Bangladesh's best-known faces and wields considerable influence among the Western elite.
- It will be no small feat for Yunus to restore normalcy to Bangladesh. In recent weeks, clashes between protesters and security personnel have left more than 300 people dead, one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the South Asian country’s history.
- While Hasina has lifted millions out of poverty through garment exports, Bangladesh’s economic growth has stagnated in recent times, prompting the International Monetary Fund to provide bailout funds.