Co-Author SM Faiyaz Hossain

Under the current interim regime, extrajudicial violence has not merely been tolerated; it has been routinized.

Once lionized as the “banker to the poor,” Mohammad Yunus the microcredit mythologist now presides—directly or symbolically—over a Bangladesh in slow-motion disintegration. Over the past fourteen months, the mounting crises—economic, legal, social and political—no longer speak of mere instability; they shout systemic collapse and kleptocracy. Yunus’s promise of reform now rings hollow amid daily horrors.

The promise reflects his longstanding fictitious tales of donor friendly rhetoric and fundraising manuals pertaining to three zeros; and sending poverty to museums. 

Economic Stagnation and Social Collapse

Bangladesh’s long-praised growth trajectory has lost traction. In FY 2024–25, growth fell to 4.1 %, the weakest since the COVID era, per World Bank assessment. If the investment drought deepens, projections suggest a drop toward 3.3 % in 2025.

Over 100 garment factories have shuttered over the past year, costing tens of thousands of jobs (Daily Industry BD). Official unemployment hovers at 4.6 %, but a deeper reckoning of underemployment, youth joblessness, and hidden labor markets suggests far higher human cost (Daily Observer). Nearly 85 % of workers remain informal—no contracts, no social protection (Dhaka Tribune).

In industrial belts like Gazipur, police acknowledge many arrested for petty theft or street mugging are recently laid-off factory workers (New Age). When the state fails to provide, survival becomes the only logic, and crime swells to fill the void.

Theories of Yunus delivered to convince his Western philanthropists have failed to make financial relevance with Global investors. Yunus doesn’t just lack political acumen, he was too naïve to begin his step in the game. 

Lawlessness, State Terror, and Mob Carnage

Justice no longer exists as a concept, only as a performative façade masking systemic brutality and institutional collapse. Under the current interim regime, extrajudicial violence has not merely been tolerated; it has been routinized. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, at least 8 extrajudicial killings and 19 deaths in custody were documented.

Between August 2024 and March 2025, human rights monitors recorded 20 such killings, involving torture, beatings, and summary executions. Mob lynchings have surged with terrifying ferocity: between mid-2024 and mid-2025, at least 637 people were lynched—representing a twelvefold increase from the 51 deaths recorded in 2023.

This wave of vigilante violence has been met with state indifference—if not tacit encouragement. Simultaneously, religious minorities have been subjected to a coordinated campaign of persecution: between August 2024 and June 2025, 2,442 hate crimes—including arson, sexual assaults, desecration of temples and churches, and targeted killings—were recorded, underscoring a culture of impunity that has metastasized into open terror.

These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a regime where law is weaponized, justice is ornamental, and human life is expendable.

Since Muhammad Yunus assumed office, there has been a disturbing rise in alleged political persecution through the legal system: arrests, false lawsuits, and invented murder charges serving as tools of harassment rather than justice. Beyond the courts, thousands have been detained under Operation Devil Hunt, with over 11,300 arrests reported by late February 2025, many allegedly including people with only tenuous or no links to criminal acts. 

Yunus never had, never tried for public mandate. Employed by the protesters of July uprising is far from being a democratic mandate. Yunus never had the courage to face a public referendum to justify his throne. He preferred to enjoy the authority, ban political parties without referendum and promote divisive rhetoric among the masses. 

Women, Children, and the Machinery of Cruelty

The sexual violence statistics are a national disgrace. In the first half of 2025, 481 rape cases were reported—nearing the total for all of 2024 (The Daily Star). Child rape cases, in just one seven-month span, rose by 75 % (The Daily Star).

Protests led by women or students are met with torture, rape threats, solitary confinement (Human Rights Watch). Ibtedayi teachers demanding job recognition were beaten, tear-gassed, and dispersed in January 2025 (JMBF).

Prisons continue to serve as killing grounds. Deaths in custody are frequent; euphemisms like “heart attacks” or “natural causes” mask systematic violence.

Corpses in Rivers: the Floating Dead

A macabre trend haunts Bangladesh’s waterways. River police data show that in 2025, an average of 43 bodies each month have been pulled from rivers, up from 36 per month in 2024. From January to July 2025 alone, 301 bodies were recovered; 92 remain unidentified. Narayanganj recorded 34 recoveries, Dhaka 32 (Daily Star).

In one case, a woman and a child were found floating in the Buriganga River, both strangled before being dumped, according to autopsy (Financial Post BD). In late August, a headless body was recovered from the Shitalakkhya River in Narayanganj; the victim was later identified as a 27-year-old man (Financial Post BD).

In Keraniganj, the bodies of a man and woman were discovered tied with a 50-kg rice sack, and another victim in a burqa drifted nearby (Financial Post BD).

In Netrokona District (March 2025), the bodies of three fish poachers were found in the Dhanu River after clashes involving community groups (bdnews24). In Chandpur, two older men were retrieved from the Dakatia River—one with visible stab wounds and a severed leg vein (Dhaka Tribune)¹⁷.

In Khulna, over 50 bodies were pulled from various rivers between August 2024 and September 2025; 20 remain unidentified (Khulna naval police). In Chandpur’s Meghna River, seven bodies from an Al Bakhira cargo vessel murder were handed over to families—and a probe committee was formed (BD Pratidin).

Notably, the body of journalist Bibhuranjan Sarkar—after threats and intimidation—was recovered from the Meghna River in Munshiganj in August 2025 (IFJ / BMSF).

These are not accidents or drownings; they are executions turned invisible, pollution turned weapon, rivers made into graveyards without funeral. 

Passport, Visas, and Global Shame

Bangladesh’s passport value has eroded, visa rejections are multiplying, and global watchdogs—HRW, Odhikar, UN human rights bodies—have flagged Dhaka for systemic violations.

The moral capital of the country is bankrupt. Investors and donors hesitate to engage with a government intertwined with terror, silence, and complicity.

Disasters as Symptoms, Not Anomalies

The October 13, 2025 garment-chemical factory fire in Dhaka, which killed 16 workers, was not a random accident — it was a preventable massacre. Locked rooftop escape doors and unchecked toxic gas turned the building into a sealed crematorium.

Days later, the Yunus government has failed to launch any credible investigation, identify the factory owners, or bring those responsible to justice.

No arrests have been made, no compensation schemes publicly disclosed, and no structural safety audits initiated. Instead, the administration has issued vague statements and deflected responsibility, shielding business interests at the expense of workers’ lives. This silence is not mere negligence — it is complicity. 

This is not a standalone incident, rather a pattern. The handling of the Gazi Tire Factory fire tragedy reflects a troubling pattern of negligence and institutional disregard for accountability.

Despite the devastating loss of life and clear safety failures, Yunus—under whose interim government the incident unfolded—failed to ensure a thorough, transparent investigation or meaningful compensation for victims’ families.

This inaction not only denied justice to the workers but also signaled an alarming indifference to labor rights and workplace safety. In the past 13 months, similar negligence has been observed in incidents such as the Hazaribagh factory fire (2024) and the Chittagong shipbreaking yard accidents (2024-2025), where victims were met with inadequate investigations and stalled compensation efforts.

By neglecting to pursue corporate responsibility and systemic reform, Yunus reinforced the vulnerability of industrial workers in Bangladesh, deepening mistrust between the state and its most exploited laborers. His failure to act decisively in the aftermath stands as a stark contradiction to his international image as a champion of social justice.

Over the past 13 months of the Yunus regime, Bangladesh’s labour sector has been trapped in a cycle of grand promises, fragile protections, and cynical neglect. The government’s repeated declarations of “historic reforms” amounted to little more than political theatre, as factory floors across the country continued to mirror a grim reality of wage theft, unsafe workplaces, and repressed voices.

While MoLE boasted of upcoming amendments to labour laws, millions of workers — especially in the sprawling informal sector — remained invisible to the legal system. Inspection bodies were underfunded and toothless, allowing factory owners to operate with impunity as thousands were laid off illegally, denied benefits, and silenced when they protested.

Unionization was stifled, particularly in Export Processing Zones, where rights existed only on paper, and “social audits” became nothing more than PR rituals for global brands. Worker unrest exploded repeatedly, from delayed Eid allowances to unpaid salaries and unsafe conditions, yet the government responded with empty press briefings and tokenistic committees.

The much-touted October 2025 labour law reform deadline became a symbol of inertia, tangled in corporate resistance and bureaucratic gamesmanship. The past year has laid bare a bitter truth: under Yunus’s leadership, labour rights were not defended — they were traded off, delayed, and dismissed, leaving workers to fight alone against a system designed to exploit them.

From Savior Icon to Enabler of Decay

Mohammad Yunus once embodied a hopeful alternative—microcredit, grassroots empowerment, moral leadership. Yet under his interim leadership, Bangladesh is unravelling in every direction: economic collapse, mob justice, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, rivers flooded with corpses, and institutional impotence. From Teachers to slums, the elites to poets all have suffered under the Yunus’ reign of Terror. 

Yunus may not have physically ordered every atrocity, but he now presides over a regime that normalized them. His Nobel halo cannot conceal the inferno beneath. Rebuilding a nation demands more than symbolic leadership—it demands justice, accountability, and courage. Today, Bangladesh has none. Yunus had the opportunity to unite the nation and develop a social contract among the political parties. Instead what Yunus has contributed had cemented a pipeline for cycle of violence to multiply in the future. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Syria’s recovery is not just symbolic—it’s strategic. A stable, unified Syria is essential for regional security, refugee returns, and long-term economic integration.

The war in Syria may not be over on paper, but on the ground, the tide has clearly turned. Since the collapse of the Assad regime in December 2024, nearly 250,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey have returned home. This movement is not driven by propaganda or pressure, but by something far more powerful: the hope that Syria, at long last, is stabilizing.

That hope is grounded in real, visible change. The Damascus Stock Exchange has reopened, signaling a cautious but meaningful restart of the formal economy. Finance Minister Mohammed Yisr Barnieh called it a message to the world—that Syria is back in business.

The turning point came on May 13, when U.S. President Donald Trump, during a landmark visit to Riyadh, announced the lifting of sanctions on Syria. Ten days later, the U.S. Treasury issued General License 25, permitting transactions with Syria’s new transitional government, headed by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa. The EU swiftly followed with a coordinated suspension of its own sanctions regime. In less than two weeks, Syria went from pariah to partner in the eyes of global policymakers.

The momentum is not only diplomatic. Gulf states are stepping up. On Saturday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, speaking from Damascus, announced a joint initiative with Qatar to help fund salaries for Syrian civil servants. These are the sorts of actions that turn ceasefires into recoveries.

And yet, despite these gains, Syria’s path forward still faces one last—and deeply entrenched—obstacle: the PKK-affiliated administration in northeast Syria, branded to the world as the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), and militarily represented by the PYD and SDF.

Let’s be candid. For years, Western governments, NGOs, and think tanks have celebrated the AANES as a “progressive” alternative in Syria. But the reality on the ground tells a much darker story. Despite controlling vast natural resources, receiving billions in foreign aid, and enjoying unprecedented U.S. military protection, the AANES has delivered little more than corruption, repression, and instability.

Entire Arab and Assyrian communities have been displaced under their watch. Basic services remain in disrepair. Youth conscription, political detentions, and even child recruitment are not allegations—they are documented practices. Many in Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, and Hasakah view the AANES not as a government but as an occupying structure—an extension of the PKK’s transnational project, not a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

This is not just Syria’s internal issue. It’s a regional problem. The longer these entities maintain their grip, the harder it becomes to achieve a unified, sovereign Syrian state capable of rebuilding and reconciling.

To its credit, the transitional government in Damascus has not responded with vengeance. President Al-Sharaa has focused on restoring institutions, rebuilding national infrastructure, and pursuing a post-conflict political identity that moves beyond sectarianism. But these efforts will remain incomplete until all Syrian territories are returned to accountable, sovereign administration.

In this context, the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Damascus sends a powerful signal. Newly appointed American envoy Thomas Barrack—who also serves as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey—raised the American flag over the embassy for the first time since 2012. He praised Syria’s new leadership and openly discussed the prospect of peace between Syria and Israel—once a diplomatic impossibility. Barrack noted that the Caesar Act sanctions must now be repealed by Congress, describing President Trump as impatient with sanctions that obstruct reconstruction.

None of this should be mistaken for instant success. The Syrian state remains fragile. Public sector wages are still well below the cost of living. Corruption, while being addressed, is not yet defeated. And sectarian wounds—especially those left by clashes between pro-Assad remnants and local communities—will take time to heal.

But from my perspective as a European political analyst, this is the first time in years that Syria’s future feels negotiable rather than doomed.

To my Arab readers: Syria’s recovery is not just symbolic—it’s strategic. A stable, unified Syria is essential for regional security, refugee returns, and long-term economic integration.

To Western policymakers: the failed experiment of non-state actors ruling eastern Syria must end. It did not bring democracy. It brought dysfunction. The time has come to support a Syrian solution, not a Kurdish separatist detour funded by Western guilt and strategic confusion.

The Syrian war broke the country. But the outlines of recovery are finally emerging. The world has a choice: engage constructively—or prolong the suffering under the illusion of alternatives that have long since collapsed.