Who Is a Hostage and Who Is Not a Hostage

Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word hostage in this fashion:

1. a) a person held by one party in a conflict as a pledge pending the fulfillment of an                agreement;

    b) a person taken by force to secure the taker's demands;

2. one that is involuntarily controlled by an outside influence

By this definition, let me tell who a hostage is.

The people held in captivity in Gaza by Hamas including Americans. 

The prison guards and journalists being held in captivity by prisoners and drug gangs in Ecuador. 

The Armenians being held by the government of Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagarno-Karabakh region. 

Now let me tell you who isn't a hostage.

The people who were found guilty of crimes they committed when storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Unlike what is happening in Israel and Gaza, in Ecuador and in the Nagarno-Karabakh region, those who have been charged with crimes related to their actions on January 6, 2021, are receiving full due process. They have a right to a lawyer, a right to a trial by a judge or a jury of their peers, a right to receive evidence of the charges against them and the right to challenge the credibility of the evidence against them. If found guilty, there is the right to appeal the verdict. 

Hamas, the Ecuadorian drug gangs and the Azerbaijani government aren't affording their captives any such rights. Of course, the people who were being held captive by Hamas, the Ecuadorian drug gangs and the Azerbaijani government are innocent civilians who have done no wrong other than to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Defeated, former President Donald Trump and his lackey Congresswoman Elise Stefanik are bastardizing the use of the word hostage. In so doing, they have minimized and trivialized the suffering of people now being held hostage by the Azerbaijani government in the Nagarno-Karabakh region, by Ecuadorian drug gangs and by Hamas somewhere in a underground tunnel in Gaza.