Dear Mr. Editor,

I appreciate DS's anti-hartal stand since late 90s. DS came out very strongly against hartal as a political weapon during the Hasina regime, but started to falter recently until you come out with your commentary 'So what have you Proved'. The reason I'm saying so is that your recent news coverage were appreciative of hartal. Just on the other day DS came out with a front page news headline that 'MPs protest UNDP Res. Rep.'s comments about hartal'. After reading the news story I realised that your reporter had a private talk with one AL PM at that function and twisted the news item to give an impression to the reader that MPs protested when UNDP official spoke against hartal. So, I can imagine when you're writing commentary against hartal, many of your news reporters are pro-hartal.

Hartal violets human rights whatever way you define human rights. Hartal prevents children going to school, hartal prevents patients going to hospitals, hartal obstructs people's livelihood and hartal violates people's freedom of movements. So anyone who cares for human rights must speak out against hartal.

Journalists working with the DS are the product of this society where lack of professionalism is pervasive in every institution. I don't expect unbiased editorial from DS but expect unbiased news coverage. Media has an important role to mobilise opinion against hartal. I hope that DS would play its historic role to mobilise public opinion that'd force our immature political leadership to abandon hartal culture.