Lack of information adding to the agony
Print Edition
LIKE other relatives of the passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, Wang Zheng’s frustration and anger over a lack of information about the fate of his loved ones continues to grow two weeks after the plane went missing.
“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I’ve been dreaming of my parents every day,” said the 30-year-old IT engineer from Beijing, whose father and mother, Wang Linshi and Xiong Yunming, were on the flight as part of a group of Chinese artists touring Malaysia.
The plane’s disappearance on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 has hit China particularly hard, with almost two-thirds of the 239 people on board its citizens.
The Chinese government has responded to the crisis with almost unprecedented forcefulness, deploying nearly a dozen ships and several aircraft to the search effort and assigning government officials to meet relatives and liaison with Malaysian officials.
Every day at a Beijing hotel, the relatives attend a morning briefing on the missing plane. Then follows another long day of watching the news and waiting, before an evening briefing that inevitably offers little more information.
Their patience has at times worn thin.
After a meeting on Saturday with Malaysia Airlines and Malaysian government officials, impatience turned to anger as relatives shouted: “We want to know what the reality is!” and “Give us back our loved ones!”
A statement issued by relatives following the meeting said: “We believe we have been strung along, kept in the dark and lied to by the Malaysian government.”
Nan Jinyan, sister-in-law of missing passenger Yan Ling, a 29-year-old engineer with a company that designs equipment for heart patients, said: “I’m psychologically prepared for the worst and I know the chances of them coming back alive are extremely small.”
But she said she was deeply unhappy with what she called the vague and often contradictory information coming from Malaysia Airlines.
“If they can’t offer something firm, they ought to just shut up,” Yan said.
Wang said he last spoke with his parents the night of their departure, shortly before they boarded the plane.
“I am not leaving until I know for certain where my parents are,” he said.
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