Malaysians United in MH17 Aftermath

Global Times (China)

28 July 2014

Oh Ei Sun

Nearly five months ago, as Malaysians woke up to the tragic and surreal news that one of national air carrier Malaysian Airlines’ planes en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing simply vanished into thin air. The resulting search effort has still produced no result.

And then, disaster hit again. Just as we were moving out of the shadow of MH370, we were again rudely woken up to bombshell news, that flight MH17, flying on an established and widely flown air route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, had crashed in the eastern part of Ukraine controlled by the armed opposition.

The nation, like the world, was thrown into shock. We wallowed in despair. Traditional and social media alike were cluttered with helpless questions such as “why us again?” The unfortunate coincidence of having two civilian aircraft downed under mysterious circumstances was simply too emotionally overwhelming for many Malaysians.

… The author is a senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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