MH17: A Year Without the Truth – uncovering the secrecy surrounding the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 shootdown

Yana Erlashova, Vitaly Biryukov, “MH17: A Year Without the Truth” (RT Documentary, 2014)

On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-17, carrying nearly 300 people, was shot down in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Over a year later, debris from the shootdown is still being uncovered, the investigation into the incident is still shrouded in secrecy and the narrative accepted (without much questioning) by the mainstream Western news media that the passenger jet was hit by a BUK missile fired by Donbass rebels, supposedly backed by Russia, is not backed by the evidence so far recovered. What is also very odd is that one of the parties likely to be culpable, Ukraine, has signed a non-disclosure agreement with Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands  which allows any of the signatories to veto any attempt by other signatories to release results of the investigation into the shootdown to the general public. In this context, a documentary about Flight MH-17, the secrecy around its fate and what actually lies behind that secrecy by Russia Today (RT) is not only welcome but necessary.

The documentary takes the form of various interviews with people in Malaysia, parts of Europe and the Donbass area where the plane went down, all of whom have some interest in the shootdown: among others, the families of Captain Wan Amran and a co-pilot who were part of the flight crew are interviewed as are also close relatives of a couple of passengers on the jet. The RT team also talk to some of the people who are still recovering debris from the fallen jet in fields around their homes. Dutch blogger Max van der Werff, Malaysian engineer Mohammad Azahar Zanuddin and German freelance journalist Billy Six (who visited the crash site and spoke to witnesses) are among those who doubt the official Western narrative of a BUK missile having brought down the jet. For different reaons, everyone interviewed expresses a desire to see the secrecy surrounding the plane’s shootdown lifted and the facts about how it came down made public: the grieving families of the two crew members need to know how their loved ones died so they can get on with their lives; others such as the Berlin lawyer representing German families who lost relatives in the crash believe that Ukraine must bear responsibility at least for allowing Flight MH17 to fly over an area where civil war was raging and the Donbass rebels had brought down a military jet.

The interview with the relatives of Captain Wan Amran is quite revealing in sections where the women say they were not allowed by the Malaysian government to view the dead pilot’s body directly, let alone touch it to prepare it for proper Muslim burial. The Dutch blogger says that he learned more about the case by visiting the crash site than on what he saw on his laptop; he also questions the Netherlands’ role in leading the investigation into the shootdown, given that the country is a member of NATO and therefore cannot be an impartial party. The German freelancer admits that initially he believed Western reports about who shot down the plane but after visiting the crash site and talking to people in the area, his opinion changed. Local people tell the RT reporter that they saw military jets approach the jet and shoot at it. The Berlin lawyer says that he received death threats by phone from someone claiming to be a Ukrainian Nazi. Most tragic of all is the story of the co-pilot who left behind a young wife pregnant with their first child.

Astonishingly in one scene, the RT journalist and a local Donbass resident in Petropavlivka find fragments of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777; the resident points to a round hole in one piece of the wreckage. They take the fragments to a local government building where a woman tells them that the fragments are set aside for the Dutch Safety Board to collect.

Later in the documentary the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad bemoans his country’s lack of spine in insisting on obtaining the truth about the crash and in following the Western news reporting in spite of the lack of evidence. He did not think that the investigation into the crash is being carried out objectively.

Although the RT documentary does not claim to have discovered who is responsible for the shootdown, what evidence is presented defies the official Western account and suggests very strongly that the Ukrainian government and military may be complicit in bringing down the plane. Why the Western narrative puts the blame on the Donbass rebels (and by association, Russia) is never explained – the aim of the documentary is mainly to penetrate the secrecy surrounding the crash – and so the shootdown is not placed in the context of the civil war in Ukraine and the parties behind that war that wish to see it continue and drag Russia into the fighting, so as to drain and ruin its economy and possibly destabilise that country and make it ripe for a colour revolution masterminded by Washington.

A more detailed exposition of what happened to Flight MH17 that would put it into a wider context that includes the ongoing war in Ukraine, what is at stake behind it and the media propaganda surrounding its reporting would have been welcome; this documentary does not do nearly enough but given the paucity of information so far about the crash, it is the best there is. Curiously, after this documentary was broadcast, its makers were contacted by the Dutch Safety Board for help in obtaining the fragments of MH17 shown in the film.