US Senator Dick Durbin offers his full support to Prof Yunus

US Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin has expressed his support for Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus and urged US President Joe Biden to support him as well.
“I’m going to offer my full support to him today. I believe in him. I did 20 years ago, and I do today. I urge President Biden to support him as well. I know Dr Yunus has the best interests of the Bangladeshi people at heart and will do his utmost in this challenging time,” Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois, said at the Senate floor yesterday.
He detailed Nobel Laureate Yunus’ life-long work of developing microloan programmes that allow low-income families in developing countries make a living, while also adding how he faced the wrath of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, according to a statement by Durbin.
Durbin began his remarks by recalling his first trip to Bangladesh, when he first met Prof Yunus.
“During the course of that trip, I was introduced to an economics professor [Dr Yunus] at the university. He was an interesting character. He had come up with a theory that he thought would help the poorest people on Earth. It was known as microcredit, and he created something called the ‘Grameen Bank,’ the people’s bank,” Durbin said.
“Basically, what he set out to do was to prove that you could loan a small amount of money to the poorest people on Earth and dramatically change their lives. They would pay it back and start to be more constructive and more profitable in what they were doing… we kept in touch after that visit.”
Durbin said that he thought he was extraordinary and that he should be recognised here as well. He then led the effort with the late Senator Mike Enzi and Congressman Rush Holt to award the Congressional Gold Medal to this remarkable economics professor, Muhammad Yunus.
“He was sometimes known as the ‘Banker to the Poor’ after he received the Nobel Prize. He pioneered microlending as a groundbreaking method of helping some of the world’s poorest people. He recognised that with just a little bit of money in hand, many people could lift themselves out of poverty,” Durbin said.
“Through his Grameen Bank, Dr Yunus proved that microlending could be done – collateral-free – and that investing in poor women actually paid off. In fact, most of Grameen Bank’s loans have gone to poor women who rise from terrible poverty to become small businesspeople,” Durbin continued.
Durbin then shared a story of meeting a woman in Uganda who received a microloan from Grameen Bank.
“I’ve seen the results of that innovative approach all over the world now, including a visit to a ramshackle hut in Uganda where I met three mothers who were working in the local market. I asked them, through an interpreter, how microcredit had changed their lives,” Durbin said.
“One woman said, ‘My knees have gone soft.’ I didn’t understand what she meant. I asked her to explain.”
“She said, ‘Before I got my microcredit loan, which gave me a chance to go to the market and make a little money, I used to have to crawl on her knees to beg her husband for money to feed the children. I don’t have to crawl anymore. My knees have gone soft,'” Durbin shared.
Durbin said because of the success of many microcredit programs, which have allowed more than 140 million people on five continents to receive microloans, Dr Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
“Yet, Dr Yunus has endured baseless harassment by the Bangladeshi government for years, including being saddled with more than 100 unsubstantiated legal charges and threats of six months to life in prison on these faulty claims.”
“Quite simply, Dr Yunus’ ideas changed the world and helped earn him that Nobel Peace Prize. Tragically, his ideas also earned him the wrath of the Bangladeshi Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, whose government harassed Dr Yunus for years with questionable legal charges and threatened jail time,” Durbin said.
The harassment campaign against Yunus has been denounced by more than 100 Nobel Prize winners, including former US President Barack Obama. Durbin led the effort in the United States Congress to award Prof Yunus the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010, recognising his pioneering contributions in the fight against global poverty. The Medal was later presented to Yunus in 2013.
“Imagine my surprise last month… Hasina finally resigned as prime minister of Bangladesh amid massive public protests, and the students who were leading the protest demanded that the leader of their country be none other than Dr Muhammad Yunus, the same economics professor I met more than 20 years ago,” Durbin said.
“I called him on the phone when I heard his good fortune. He was upbeat and believes that the people of that country are prepared now to rise to this historic opportunity.”