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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

letters@Hhedailystar.net
Why should patients suffer during hartal7.
Patients suffer most during a hartal. They face tremendous problems to reach the hospital. Doctors fail to attend their patients in time. During the last hartal 1 also had much trouble to rush my younger sister to hospital, who suddenly got sick.
Calling hartal or strike is a democratic right of political parties. But hartal often violates human rights of the common people who need to go to their workplaces. Leaders of both ruling and opposition parties are escorted by their public or private security forces but common people face great difficulties to travel to their destinations. I think government has a sacred responsibility to take appropriate measures to avoid hartal. The opposition should not harm the common people through violence.
Professor M Zahidul Haque Dean, Faculty of Agriculture SAU, Dhaka
Country's main obstacles to progress
I support a secular, democratic Bangladesh. Institutions need to be depoliticised and the rot at the top of political parties removed. More effective oversight would be required this time to reduce abuses.
Dire warnings in the party leaders' speeches against a "minus-two" solution are about threats to their own positions, not the country's interests. These two women are the biggest obstacles to progress. Elections have returned, but they have been unable to advance democracy further due to their poisonous personal relationship. As long as they or members of their families remain in power, the same issues will recur.
Arguing at length whether a particular phone works or not during this serious crisis is simply the latest proof that they are not the leaders Bangladesh needs.
Neil Taylor
One-mail
Halloween: Paganism in a new package
The true name of Halloween is "Samhain." This was the Celtic Lord of the Dead. For 3 days from Oct 29-31, the Celtic people, along with their priestly class called Druids, hold an ancient rite which marks the beginning and the end of the year. A druid was a member of the priestly class in Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, and possibly other parts of Celtic Western Europe, during the Iron Age.
Very little is currently known about the ancient druids because they left no written accounts about themselves. The druids then also appear in some of the medieval tales from Christianised Ireland like the Tain B6 Ctlailnge, where they are largely portrayed as sorcerers who opposed the coming of Christianity.
Usually a week before the rites of Samhain began, the Druid had ordered the people of the Celtic tribe to disperse throughout the countryside and gather thousands of wicker reeds. They would then construct a giant human effigy as the wicker man. A wicker man was a large wicker statue of a human used by the ancient Druids (priests of Celtic paganism) for human sacrifice by burning it in effigy. Many cages had been built. Each prisoner would be tied to one of the cages. Then the Druids began their idea of fun and games.
Yet, I have seen many Christian churches throughout this nation hold Halloween parties within the church building. Every single one of these things is directly from the celebration of Samhain. You are simply trying to turn something evil into something good!
Ted Rudow III, MA
EncinaAve
Palo Alto, CA