The downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 298 people aboard heaped new distress on a nation still stung by the trauma and global stigma of Flight MH370’s disappearance four months ago.
For the second time this year, Malaysians yesterday awoke to black newspaper front pages bearing the grim news of yet another air disaster that left dozens of their countrymen dead or missing, and linking their nation once again to a dreadful tragedy.
“Why is there no peace of mind in our country? Tragedy after tragedy is happening to us,” said G. Subramaniam, whose son was aboard MH370.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it came down late on Thursday over eastern Ukraine. Forty-three Malaysians were aboard.
US officials said it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile, a possible casualty of a rebellion in the area by pro-Russia insurgents.
The new crisis is tearing open festering wounds in the Malaysian psyche caused by MH370.
“Just heard the terrible news. I don’t think we are ready to accept this so soon after [the] MH370 tragedy,” badminton ace Lee Chong Wei, the country’s top sporting star, said on Twitter.
With MH370, Malaysians watched in dismay as their government and flagship carrier came under heavy international criticism for their inability to explain what happened to the plane.
It mysteriously diverted off its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew, and is now believed to have crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean, though no trace has been found.
Passenger relatives have alleged Malaysian incompetence and a coverup, Malaysia Airlines bookings have plummeted and the country has become the butt of grim jokes worldwide.
Fears also have emerged of a damaging impact on Malaysia’s important tourist sector — visitors from China, a key source of arrivals, dropped 20 percent in April, according to the latest Malaysian figures.
Two-third of MH370’s passengers were Chinese nationals. There also were 38 Malaysians aboard.
The twin tragedies are destroying Malaysians’ sense of their multicultural country as a bastion of stability and prosperity in an often turbulent Southeast Asia, said Ibrahim Suffian, head of the leading polling firm.
“Malaysians have always felt shielded from calamity and tragedy. Typhoons, earthquakes, wars — it’s always not us, but Indonesia, Burma or the Philippines — but that sense of security is now shattered,” he said.
MH17 is especially painful for Muslim-majority Malaysia as it comes during the fasting month of Ramadan, a time of joyful family gatherings that culminates later this month with Eid al-Fitr, Islam’s biggest festival.
Already fresh questions are being asked of Malaysia, particularly why the state carrier was flying over an active war zone.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who lamented after MH17’s crash that 2014 had been “a tragic year for Malaysia,” defended the airline, saying the flight path was deemed safe by international air authorities.
Top opposition figure Lim Kit Siang said Malaysians “reel with incredulity, shock and grief at another major air disaster to hit the country.” However, Lim, normally a harsh critic of Najib’s government, said Malaysians should rally around the prime minister.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to