MARCH 5, 2015 4:21 PM March 5, 2015 4:21 pm
Chinese police officers trying to block reporters from interviewing relatives of passengers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Beijing on Jan. 30. Many of the relatives demanded that Malaysian officials retract their statement that all on board died, saying they refused to believe this without hard evidence. Credit Andy Wong/Associated Press
Nearly a year ago, on March 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for Beijing. The Boeing 777 was due to arrive with 239 crew members and passengers, among them more than 150 Chinese citizens. About 40 minutes after takeoff, contact between the aircraft and air traffic controllers ceased. Hundreds of relatives of the Chinese passengers traveled to Beijing and waited for weeks in a hotel for news of their loved ones.
On March 24, the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, announced that Flight 370 was thought to have gone down in the southern Indian Ocean and that all on board were presumed dead. The airline advised relatives to return home, while maintaining contact though a liaison office near the Beijing airport staffed by airline personnel and Malaysian government representatives.
Recently, family members of the Chinese passengers on the flight described the pain of holidays without their loved ones, their frustration at the lack of answers and their anger over their treatment by the Malaysian authorities and the airline.
Steve Wang, whose 57-year-old mother was on the plane, is a salesman for a technology company in Beijing and has served as an unofficial spokesman for the families. The following are excerpts from an interview:
The families in China were all told we could remain in communication with the Malaysian government and the airline through a liaison office set up in a building north of the Beijing airport. We were fooled. The liaison office seemingly has staff from the airline and the Malaysian transport bureau, but they never answer any questions. They say they are only there to collect questions and pass them on, and have no power to give any response. For a year, the families have submitted numerous questions but have never gotten any response.
There are police outside the building to make sure no reporters can go into the liaison office.
We went to the Malaysian Embassy. We weren’t allowed in or to see anyone. We went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which never did anything more than to tell us that it’s “urging Malaysia to respond.”
No one is listening. There is no channel of communication with any authoritative agency.
I cannot describe our rage.
Everyone asks us about compensation. We don’t want compensation. We want the truth. How can anyone start talking about compensation before finding out what happened?
The families tried to form an organization to act together, but the Chinese authorities told us we weren’t allowed to do this.
This past Spring Festival [Lunar New Year] was extremely difficult. No one in my family dared to talk about the missing plane even though it weighed on everyone’s mind. No one dared to talk about it because we didn’t know how. The whole family spent the festival in almost total silence.
The airline declared everyone dead according to their calculation. I think that’s highly irresponsible. They refuse to release the core data behind their calculation. What are they hiding? The families feel that Malaysia wants to end this as soon as possible. They’re always telling us to move on, but how can we move on without knowing what happened?
