Most of the world believes that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blasted out of the sky on Friday by a surface-to-air missile fired by a klatch of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. The rebels adamantly deny this — but they didn’t convince anyone of their innocence with their behavior at the crash site. For almost three days, they refused to allow unfettered access to the site, even going as far as to refuse to allow the release of hundreds of bodies. It took until yesterday — and only under intense international pressure — for the rebels to agree to surrender the black boxes to Malaysian authorities and allow the bodies to be evacuated by train.
Most of the bodies that have been recovered so far were sitting aboard five refrigerated train cars in Torez, a mining town in rebel-held territory. The Ukrainian government claimed the rebels were blocking access to both the bodies and the crash site. The rebels claim that they had been more than willing to turn over the bodies to international representatives — but Kiev wasn’t allowing them to enter. The rebel account sounded like something that Soviet-era propagandists — or Tea Partiers here in the States — would have cooked up, and was particularly insulting in light of reports that rebels commandeered 196 bodies at gunpoint and put them aboard train cars. They only relented yesterday morning when they allowed forensic experts from the Netherlands — home to 198 of the victims, proportionally more than the United States lost on 9/11 — to inspect the bodies.
Last night, Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak announced that his government had reached a deal with Alexander Borodai, the commander of the rebel detachment that had been at the crash site. Borodai’s men allowed the bodies to be taken by train to Kharkiv, in Ukrainian government territory, where they will be turned over to Dutch custody under the supervision of Malaysian representatives. At the same time, they handed over the black boxes to Malaysian authorities. A train carrying the bodies arrived in Kharkiv on Tuesday morning, and the bodies are expected to be flown to the Netherlands sometime on Tuesday afternoon.
The announcement of the deal came just hours after President Obama told Russian president Vladimir Putin in no uncertain terms to ensure full access to the crash site. His sentiments were echoed a few hours earlier by Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, who told his parliament that if Russia didn’t back up its verbal support of greater access with action, “all political, economic and financial options” were very much on the table. Shortly after Obama’s speech, the UN Security Council unanimously demanded that international investigators have full access to the site and also called for a cease-fire in the area.
It says a lot about these rebels that it took international pressure for them to do what every standard of decency and morality required them to do. At the very least, their obstinacy amounted to pouring salt in the wounds of the victims’ families, which is pretty ghastly even if they weren’t responsible for shooting down the plane. However, if they indeed were responsible for this tragedy, no expense must be spared to ensure that everyone — and that means EVERYONE — responsible goes to prison.
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Edited by D.H.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
