Bangladesh Foreign Minister Momen ridicules report calling him 'pro-Chinese'

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Monday dismissed as ''false and baseless'' a newspaper article which called him "pro-Chinese" who worked as a lobbyist for a Chinese organisation before becoming a minister in 2018.

''This (description of him) is very strange and surprising," Momen told a press conference, referring to an article published on Sunday in the Kalbela, a Bangla newspaper with a headline titled ''US Sanctions is Coming, Government Remains Ready''.

The foreign minister called a press conference to brief the media about Bangladesh Premier Sheikh Hasina's upcoming Qatar visit.

The article, written as an analysis, claimed that Momen worked as a lobbyist for a Chinese organisation before becoming a minister in 2018.

Refuting the statement, Momen called the article ''false and baseless''.

He pointed out that the article could not provide any reference or source to support its claim and said, "I (rather) stayed in the USA and worked there for decades".

Before joining politics in 2017, Momen served as Bangladesh's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He stayed in the US for over three decades, serving as an economics professor at a university in Boston.

Momen became the country's foreign minister after the 2018 general elections, which installed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government for the third consecutive term.

Hours after the article was published on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry strongly condemned part of the analysis, stating that the comment about Momen was a "blatant lie" and made with ill intention as it tarnished the Bangladesh government's image.

Speaking on the report's claims that the US will impose fresh sanctions on Bangladesh, Momen asserted that there was no reason for it but added that it depended on the country concerned.

''We don't have any idea about new sanctions as it depends on the country concerned (but) it would be unfortunate if any new US sanction is imposed," he said.

On December 10, 2021, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Bangladesh's elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) along with seven of its current and former officers for serious human rights violations.

Bangladesh protested the sanctions urging the US to revise its decision.

Last week, a senior US state department official said that Washington was pleased to see ''a substantial decrease of extrajudicial killings'' after the imposition of sanctions on RAB.

State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Afreen Akhter also said that Washington was concerned about the use of Bangladesh's Digital Security Act and particularly ''where the Digital Security Act has been applied''.

Her comments came amid speculations that the US might mount pressure on Bangladesh against the backdrop of ongoing geopolitics ahead of the country's general elections in early January 2024.