Chinese passengers’ relatives demand apology from M’sia

KUALA LUMPUR — Several dozen Chinese relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 yesterday staged a protest at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur only hours after flying in from Beijing, demanding that Malaysia apologise for its handling of the search for the missing plane.

The group held up banners that read “We want evidence, truth, dignity” in Chinese, and “Hand us the murderer. Tell us the truth. Give us our relatives back” in English.

Two-thirds of the 227 passengers on board the plane that disappeared on March 8 en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur were Chinese and the plane’s disappearance has sparked broad outrage in China, with celebrities joining in and travel agencies announcing boycotts.

The protesters yesterday repeatedly chanted slogans in Chinese: “We want evidence! We want the truth! We want our relatives!”

Mr Jiang Hui, the relatives’ designated representative, said they wanted a government apology for what they see as missteps in how Malaysia has handled the disaster, including Prime Minister Najib Razak’s statement on March 24 that indicated the plane had crashed with no survivors “without direct evidence or a sense of responsibility”.

Mr Najib had made a televised statement that based on radar and satellite analysis, the Boeing 777 had crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, but there were lingering questions because there was no physical evidence.

That wariness on the part of the relatives was also fuelled by missteps at the beginning of the search, which started in waters off Vietnam, then swung to areas west of Malaysia and Indonesia and then, as radar and satellite information was further analysed, to south-west of Australia and now to a second zone farther north-east.

“We hope that in these days, we can meet technical teams involved in the search and hold talks with Malaysia Airlines and the Malaysian government. We hope these discussions will not be like they had been in Beijing, with wishy-washy answers,” said Mr Jiang.

He stopped short of saying the relatives wanted to meet Mr Najib, as earlier proposed by some of them.

Before the protest, Mr Ong Ka Ting, the Malaysian Prime Minister’s special envoy to China, went to the hotel to meet the relatives.

“I’m sure in Beijing they’ve already had a lot of discussions and we understand their feelings and we know definitely by coming over here there will be a lot more discussions and meetings,” Mr Ong said. “So we try our best to assist them.”

Mr Jiang said the relatives want the Malaysian government to release information and data related to the investigation in a “prompt and comprehensive way”.

They also want the airline to set up meetings with representatives from Boeing, Rolls-Royce and Inmarsat, saying the lack of interaction was troubling.

Roll-Royce built the plane’s engines, and Inmarsat, a British satellite telecommunications company, provided the satellite data that was used to plot the jet’s final route.

Malaysia Airlines issued a statement saying it would fly family members to Perth, but only once wreckage from the plane is confirmed to have been found. It said a family assistance centre would be set up in Perth.

AGENCIES