- Yunus will be sworn in as senior adviser to the interim government today.
- “It feels good to be back home,” Yunus says upon returning to Dhaka.
- Hasina's Awami League party will not be part of the interim government.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus returned to his conflict-ravaged home in Bangladesh on Thursday to lead a new interim government after weeks of tumultuous student protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to neighboring India.
Yunus, 84, the South Asian nation's only Nobel laureate and a fierce critic of Hasina, arrived in Dhaka after receiving medical treatment in Paris, after protesters rallied behind him for his role in a government tasked with holding elections for a new leader.
“I feel good about returning home,” the economist said at the airport, where he was greeted by senior military officials and student leaders.
Student protesters had saved the country and that freedom had to be protected, he said, adding: “Whatever path our students show us, we will go ahead with that.”
Yunus is scheduled to be sworn in as head of a team of advisers at 1430 GMT at the official residence of President Mohammed Shahabuddin.
Hasina's Awami League party is not in the interim government after she resigned on Monday following weeks of violence that killed about 300 people and left thousands injured.
In a Facebook post, his son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said the party had not given up and was ready to hold talks with the opposition and the interim government.
“I had said that my family would no longer be involved in politics, but the way our party leaders and workers are being attacked, we cannot give up,” he said on Wednesday.
Yunus, known as the “banker to the poor,” was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered the fight against poverty through small loans to needy borrowers.
Hasina's dramatic exit from the country she ruled for 20 of the past 30 years, winning a fourth consecutive term in January, sparked jubilation and violence as mobs stormed and ransacked her official residence unopposed.
She is holed up at an air base near the Indian capital, New Delhi, a development that Yunus says has sparked anger toward India among some Bangladeshis.
The student-led movement that ousted Hasina grew out of protests against quotas in government jobs that escalated in July, sparking a violent crackdown that drew international criticism, though the government denied using excessive force.
The protests were also fueled by harsh economic conditions and political repression in the country, which was born after a war of liberation from Pakistan in 1971.
