Airline relatives vent their anger in march on Malaysian embassy

Furious that Malaysia has declared their loved ones lost in a plane crash without physical evidence, Chinese relatives of the missing marched yesterday to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing.

They threw plastic water bottles, tried to rush the gate and chanted “Liars!”

The Chinese government, meanwhile, demanded that Malaysia turn over the satellite data it used to conclude that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean with no survivors after turning back from its flight path to Beijing on March 8.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Among the flight’s 239 passengers, were 153 Chinese nationals, making the incident a highly emotional one for Beijing, and the government’s demand reflected the desire among many Chinese relatives of passengers for more conclusive information on the plane’s fate.

Nearly 100 relatives and their supporters marched to the embassy, wearing white T-shirts that read “Let’s pray for MH370” as they held banners and chanted for about three hours.

“Tell the truth! Return our relatives!” they shouted.

Meanwhile, Malaysia says it 
has narrowed the search area for the downed airliner by 80 per cent in the southern Indian Ocean, while Australia said improved weather would allow the hunt for possible debris from the plane to resume.

The comments from defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein came a day after the country’s prime minister announced that a new analysis of satellite data confirmed the plane crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 aboard.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But the searchers will face a daunting task of combing a vast expanse of choppy seas for suspected remnants of the aircraft sighted earlier.

“We’re not searching for a needle in a haystack – we’re still trying to define where the haystack is,” Australia’s deputy defence chief, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, told reporters in Perth.

There is a race against the clock to find any trace of the plane that could lead searchers to the black boxes, whose battery-powered “pinger” could stop sending signals within two more weeks. The batteries are designed to last at least a month.