From anguish to aggression: Trump goes on offense after midair collision
WASHINGTON –
After TWA Flight 800 crashed in New York in 1996, U.S. President Bill Clinton asked "every American not to jump to conclusions' about what brought it down and declared it time "to pull together and work together.'
Five years later, when American Airlines Flight 587 fell out of the sky, President George W. Bush predicted that the "resilient and strong and courageous people' of New York would get through the tragedy. In 2009, after a Colgan Air plane crashed near Buffalo, New York, President Barack Obama said that "tragic events such as these remind us of the fragility of life.'
And then there was President Donald Trump. In the wake of this week's midair collision near Washington, Trump was more than happy to jump to conclusions and pull the country apart rather than together. After declaring it to be an "hour of anguish for our nation,' Trump just five minutes later let anguish give way to aggression as he blamed diversity policies promoted by Obama and former President Joe Biden for the crash, which killed 67 people.
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Belarus has allowed the Kremlin to use its territory to send troops and weapons into Ukraine, and also to station its forces and nuclear weapons there. A journalist walks free, but many more languish Released alongside Tsikhanouski was longtime Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty correspondent Ihar Karnei, the U.S. government-funded broadcaster confirmed. Karnei, who had also worked with prominent Belarusian and Russian newspapers, had been serving a three-year service on extremism charges he rejected as a sham. "The release was a big surprise for me," Karnei told AP in a phone interview Saturday. "I didn't believe it until the very end, but now I understand that other political prisoners deserve the same." He said that he spent about six months in solitary confinement. "Most people suffer simply for their beliefs and do not deserve these terrible conditions and terms," Karnei said. RFE/RL's Belarusian service had been designated extremist in the country, a common label handed to anyone who criticizes Lukashenko's government. As a result, working for it or spreading its content has become a criminal offense. "We are deeply grateful to President Trump for securing the release of this brave journalist, who suffered at the hands of the Belarusian authorities," the broadcaster's CEO Stephen Capus said Saturday in a press release. Karnei was detained several times while covering the 2020 protests. Unlike many of his colleagues, he chose to stay in Belarus despite the ensuing repression. He was arrested again in July 2023, as police raided his apartment seizing phones and computers. The group Reporters Without Borders says Belarus is Europe's leading jailer of journalists. At least 40 are serving long prison sentences, according to the independent Belarusian Association of Journalists. Many face beatings, poor medical care and the inability to contact lawyers or relatives, according to activists and former inmates. Belarus also freed an Estonian national who had set up an NGO to raise funds for Belarusian refugees. According to the Estonian Foreign Ministry, Allan Roio was detained last January, and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison on charges of establishing an extremist organization. Others remain behind bars Many other prominent dissidents still languish in Belarusian jails, among them Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate serving a 10-year prison sentence on charges widely denounced as politically motivated. Bialiatski, founder of Viasna, Belarus' oldest and most prominent rights group, was arrested in 2021 during raids by the country's main security agency that still goes by its Soviet-era name, the KGB. In March 2023, he was convicted on charges of smuggling and financing actions that "grossly violated public order," and sentenced to 10 years. Authorities labeled him especially dangerous because of alleged "extremist" tendencies. He, his family and supporters say the charges against him are politically motivated, and a U.N. panel of human rights experts called on Belarus to release him. In 2022, when Bialiatski was behind bars, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with the prominent Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties. Bialiatski has been serving his sentence at a penal colony for repeat offenders in the city of Gorki. The facility is notorious for beatings and hard labor. Bialiatski's wife warned last year about his deteriorating health, saying the 62-year-old battles multiple chronic illnesses. Also behind bars is Viktor Babaryka, a former banker who was widely seen in 2020 as Lukashenko's main electoral rival, and Maria Kolesnikova, a close ally of Tsikhanouskaya and charismatic leader of that year's mass protests. With her close-cropped hair and trademark gesture of forming her hands into the shape of a heart, Kolesnikova became an even greater symbol of resistance when Belarusian authorities tried to deport her. She responded by tearing up her passport at the border and walking back into Belarus.
