Kathmandu. Mohammad Yunus, the leader of the interim government of Bangladesh, appealed to all the countrymen for political, social and religious unity on Saturday. Hugging the crying mother of a student who was shot dead by the police during a protest to end Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule, he urged them to remember the heartbreaking incident of the past and to show religious tolerance.
84-year-old Yunus, a Nobel Prize winner, returned from Europe this week and took over the leadership of the internal administration in the face of the great challenge of ending disorder and democratic reform. “Our responsibility is to build a new Bangladesh,” he said. After former Prime Minister Hasina was deposed last week by the force of the student movement, several retaliatory attacks on the country’s Hindu minority community have caused panic in the neighboring country of India as well as spreading panic at home.