Yunus’ performative statesmanship and the politics of diplomacy

By Jahanara Nuri

One.

People, hungry and subjected to extreme uncertainty and neglect, may grow weary of diplomacy and resentful of how dissent is punished. They may not always get swayed by mere charisma. Amid the unprecedented national crisis, citizens of Bangladesh, therefore, must ask: What is Muhammad Yunus truly seeking during his frequent, taxpayer-funded visits, particularly his current one to London? This is no mere ceremonial or symbolic trip. Dr. Muhammad Yunus has little use for symbols, unless he finds satisfaction in watching them burn.

His Nobel Prize and microcredit legacy, once sung in marble halls far from home, now drift through the silence of terror and helplessness, haunting the lives of 175 million whom he seeks to command. A Nobel laureate turned the Nobel problem! This contradiction speaks louder than any speech, press release from PR teams, or global charm offensive.

He sat quietly in the grand house built with the blood and dreams of his nation. Since July, its foundations have trembled before his eyes. The screen of fume-choked Delta flickered: chaos, blood, and fire. Convicted jihadists were set free. One hundred and thirty-eight violent gangs roamed the streets chanting “Nara-e-Takbir”—an Islamist war slogan once heard during attacks on activists and writers, when bombs shattered city squares, and on the night the Holey Artisan attack claimed 22 lives, most of whom were foreigners. It was the same cry heard in 1971, when Islamist collaborators, together with Pakistan’s armed forces, butchered Bengalis to protect their idea of a “state only for the Muslims.”

Two.

The slogan returned to the public sphere in July 2024 and was repurposed for terror. The scenes were nightmarish: factories ablaze, black smoke cloaking the Dhaka sky, and the dead bodies of murdered police and dissenters hanging from overbridges or under-construction buildings, trees, or fans in office rooms. In one harrowing video, July anti-quota protesters—Yunus’ supporters and allies—danced around a bloodied boy. A bamboo stick, with an iron rod driven through it, was repeatedly struck against his limp body. As he begged for life, a phone camera rolled. This happened under Yunus’ watch. His smile was serene. His words, absent. In ten months of rule, not once did he publicly mourn the victims of this descent into street violence in post-5th-August.

On August 15, 2024, the museum dedicated to the nation’s Great Leader, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman—a state property—was set on fire. Cadres, posing as students but linked to Islamist movements, danced in steps mimicking Taliban rhythms to the tune of Afghan Jelebi. In February 2025, it took three attempts to bulldoze House 32. Earlier, in July 2024, they had stormed the Special Branch office and vandalised the Climate Programme headquarters—without remorse.

Ten months into his rule, the Genocide Museums were torched. Even as this article is written, the museum of Rabindranath Tagore is under attack today, on June 10, 2025. Freedom fighters were stripped of honours, some tortured, while others were publicly humiliated. State-sponsored so-called “reforms” sought to elevate the very forces once opposed to independence. Jamaat’s ideology crept back through policy, quiet but deliberate. History was being rewritten under a new motto of nationhood, which is anchored not in pluralism but in the Quranic creed emblazoned on the flag of Pakistan’s armed forces. The old ink of divide and rule, it seems, had never dried.

Sufi singers’ shrines—guardians of Bangladesh’s pluralism—were razed. It was all along state-sponsored terror against memories of Bangladesh’s independence. Under indemnity and cries of “Nara-e-Takbir,” the past bent to fit a narrative based on lies and deception.

More than 2.1 million people have lost their jobs in the current fiscal year (Bonik Barta, 2025). Sufi singers’ shrines—guardians of Bangladesh’s pluralism—were razed. It was all part of a state-sponsored campaign against the living memory of Bangladesh’s independence. Under the shield of indemnity and the cries of “Nara-e-Takbir,” the past was bent to fit a narrative rooted in falsehood and erasure.

Lives collapsed. Millions of families drifting into poverty. But amid this cascade of loss, Yunus left a blueprint—not through action, but through silence.

It was not amnesia. It was forethought. As he once said: “Meticulously designed.”

Simultaneously, that design extended beyond Bangladesh’s borders.

Three.

When diplomacy wears a smile, it must be more than just warmth—it must convey honour and integrity. With the interim government’s press officer speculating about meetings between King Charles, Sir Keir Starmer, and Dr. Muhammad Yunus, people of Bangladesh must ask: Whose story does Britain wish to honour?

Under this interim rule, international praise risks becoming a mask. Reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others detail mass arrests, torture, and the silencing of the press. This is not a partisan accusation but a documented reality.

In his Eid address, Yunus offered vagueness dressed as vision. Amid an economic crisis at an all-time high, nationwide random political arrests and false cases, and Islamists declaring war on Bengali culture, Yunus said the Election Commission would unveil a “road map” at an “appropriate time.”

Yet 359,000 arrests have occurred in ten months. “Appropriate time” now sounds less like planning and more like delay cloaked in diplomacy.

When asked about a potential corridor through Bangladesh to Myanmar’s Rakhine State, Yunus dismissed the idea as a “complete lie.” (The Business Standard, 2025) But on April 27, his own foreign affairs adviser, Md Touhid Hossain, told the UN Bangladesh had “agreed in principle” to a “humanitarian corridor.” (Dhaka Tribune, 2025) Avoiding the term “corridor” cannot erase its implications. This isn’t just about semantics. Rakhine holds strategic value: China’s Kyaukphyu port, oil pipelines, and Russia’s access routes. If global powers already operate there, why would Bangladesh intervene?

For Yunus, the “humanitarian corridor or passage” may be a gesture—a stage for humanitarian theatre, not substance. As his alignment with China deepens, expectations for trade grow. Dependence tightens too.

Four.

He spoke of Chinese supply chains, yet remained silent on food inflation, VAT hikes, and the slashing of essential subsidies. He ignored mass detentions, custodial deaths, targeted killings, press suppression, and attacks on cultural institutions, as well as the haunting sight of bodies left in streets, workplaces, home gardens, or hanging from bamboo poles.

The victims were not statistics. They were leaders, members, and supporters of the Awami League; Chhatra League activists, volunteers, and Hindu boys. They were men, women, and children—Hindu and Muslim alike.

A nation that was striving for middle-income status by 2026 cannot afford silence in the face of disaster and crimes against humanity on this scale.

In sum, Yunus’ diplomacy reads more like performance than policy. Laced with selectivity, it invites praise while dodging accountability. This is the essence of performative statesmanship—leadership as spectacle rather than service.

His “diplomacy” leaves behind smudges of ambiguity and neglect, burning the very fabric of national trust, peaceful lives of people of Bangladesh, and cultural and ethnic diversity.

No international accolade can replace the trust of people.

Diplomacy without democracy is theatre, and Bangladesh’s stage is burning. But fire need not consume her colourful people—painted in the hues of plains and hilltops, rooted in land and rivers, voice and memory.

And on what, then, can the West as a friend truly depend? On the enduring spirit of the people of Bangladesh—diverse, resilient, and secular—or on the fleeting charisma that inflates the ego of one man, leaving the voices of pluralistic Bengal unheard?

If the West seeks to be a true ally, it must listen beyond the stage, beyond the spectacle, and speak directly with those who carry the heartbeat of Bangladesh’s multicultural, inclusive soul.

A nation, even scorched, can still rise singing—if truth returns and justice stands firm on its soil. Bangladesh’s history is not yet ashes. It is etched in the resilience of its people, painted in the colours of its plains and hilltops, flowing through the veins of its rivers and the songs of its ancient ocean.

And as the people of Bangladesh—heartbroken, worried, and searching for words—find themselves overwhelmed by the weight of despair, they turn to the eternal wisdom of Rabindranath Tagore and pray:
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free.

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.

Let my country awake in that heaven of freedom.”

Jahanara Nuri: Journalist, writer, media worker