Chinese families protest ‘accident’ explanation of MH370

Saying the explanation is “illogical”, they plan a sit-in at the MAS office until they meet its CEO and DCA officials for answers.

KUALA LUMPUR: Unable to accept that the mysterious loss of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has been officially declared an “accident” by authorities, 15 family members of several Chinese passengers on board the flight are threatening a sit-in protest at the MAS office here.

They want to meet MAS CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya and officials from the Department of Civil Aviation on the issue and are ready to spend Chinese New Year in Malaysia until their wishes are met, the Malaysian Insider said.

They also said that should neither the MAS CEO or DCA officials meet with them, they would insist on seeing Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai and Prime Minister Najib Razak instead.

“We want to know why MH370 was declared lost in an accident and on what basis was that decision made,” said Kelly Wen, the wife of Chinese passenger Li who was on the flight.

Speaking on behalf of the families, she also said they wanted updates on the investigations as well as access to the Immarsat data that led investigators to deduce that the flight ended in the southern end of the Indian Ocean.

Retiree Wen Wan Cheng, whose son Yung Sheng was on board MH370, also rejected the declaration that the missing plane was an “accident”, describing it as “illogical”.

“Despite investigations into the disappearance of the plane, we have yet to see any concrete results. We hope the authorities can probe into the missing plane again,” he said.

He was also unhappy with the Chinese government for lacking transparency and showing little support to the next-of-kin.

Those who were at the MAS office this morning wore red and white T-shirts bearing phrases “Pray for MH370” and carried placards with messages like “MH370 cry for truth. Today it’s us, tomorrow it could be you” and “MH370: Who can tell us what happened? Please help us! Come back MH370”.

It is believed more Chinese family members of those on board the missing flight will arrive today to join the sit-in protest.

MH370 went missing from radar on March 8 last year and despite exhaustive international searches for 10 months, not a trace of the aircraft has been detected leading authorities to officially declare it an accident.

Most of with 239 people on board the ill-fated flight were Chinese nationals.