Whistleblower Protection Blog : Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : National Whistleblower Legal Defense and Education Fund : Whistleblower Protection, Fraud Claims : Washington DC

Satish Shetty — who exposed many land scams in Maharashtra, India — was stabbed to death with swords on Wednesday during is morning walk.  Shetty, age 38, was a "Right to Information" (RTI) activist who began exposing corrupt land deals ten years ago. “This has become a trend and social activists are considered soft targets, the government must take immediate steps to stop such attacks,” Ms. Sumaira Abdulali, convenor of Movement against Intimidation, Threats and Revenge against Activists (MITRA), told the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Our hearts go out to Shetty's family and colleagues as we share in the loss of an ally in the cause for transparency and accountability.

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Friends and admirers of South African poet Dennis Brutus gathered yesterday afternoon to remember him at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. Follow the Continue Reading link below to see my photos of the event.  Michael Kohn, President of the National Whistleblowers Center (NWC), remembered Dennis Brutus and his role in founding NWC in an obituary posted here last month.

The event was called Somehow Tenderness Survives. The title recalls this poem by Brutus called Somehow We Survive:

Somehow we survive
and tenderness, frustrated, does not wither.

Investigating searchlights rake
our naked unprotected contours. . . .
boots club the peeling door.

But somehow we survive
severance, deprivation, loss.

Patrols uncoil along the asphalt dark
hissing their menace to our lives,

most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered and we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.

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