Some 500 people gathered near Kuala Lumpur on Sunday for a “day of remembrance” in memory of the victims of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 mysteriously disappeared in 2014, and to demand new searches. “The search must continue,” Liu Shuangfong, one of the few Chinese who traveled for this commemoration, told AFP.
“I demand justice for my son. Where is the plane?”
On March 8, 2014, the plane flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared. Although some debris appearing to belong to it was subsequently recovered in the Indian Ocean, no trace of the 239 people on board, two thirds of whom were Chinese, was found. Parents and supporters gathered in a shopping center near Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, saying they were still very affected.
“The last ten years have been a non-stop emotional roller coaster for me,” Grace Nathan, a 36-year-old Malaysian lawyer, told AFP, whose mother, Anne Daisy, 56, was on board the plane. . Addressing the crowd, she called on the Malaysian government to conduct further research. “Flight MH370 is not ancient history,” she said. Liu Shuangfong, 67, from the Chinese province of Hebei, lost her 28-year-old son, Li Yanlin, a passenger on flight MH370. “I demand justice for my son. Where is the plane?” she asked. “Malaysia is determined to find the plane. The cost is not the issue,” Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke assured journalists.
To relatives gathered for the commemoration, he indicated that he would meet representatives of the American marine exploration company Ocean Infinity, based in Texas, which has carried out previous research in vain, in order to discuss a new operation. “We are now waiting for them to give us suitable dates and I hope to meet them soon,” he said. The causes of the tragedy – the greatest mystery of modern civil aviation – are the subject of much speculation.
Different theories – suicide of the pilot, accident at sea or missile launch – have been put forward over the years to try to explain this disappearance, described as “almost inconceivable” by the Australian investigators who coordinated the first searches. This research under the auspices of Australia, carried out for almost three years over 120,000 km² in the Indian Ocean, the most important in history, was interrupted in January 2017. Ocean Infinity then launched research in 2018 , but these were completed after several months of exploration of the seabed, without success. Many of the victims’ relatives accuse Malaysia Airlines and the Malaysian government of hiding information, which those involved dispute.