Malaysia is growing increasingly frustrated at what it deems as excessive pressure from China to find the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 jetliner, which has gone missing for more than three weeks, The Wall Street Journal said today.
The business daily reported that senior Malaysian officials see it as hypocritical for China to be demanding that another government be more transparent, accusing Malaysia of hiding key information in the search for the missing plane.
Moreover, families of Chinese passengers on board the flight have been marching in the streets of Beijing carrying signs with slogans such as 'Malaysia Airlines, You Owe Us Answers!'.
Malaysian officials feel this protests would have been impossible if it was directed at the leadership in Beijing rather than at Malaysia, WSJ reported.
'These officials are frustrated and incensed at what they perceive as excessive pressure from China to find MH370,' WSJ said.
As 2014 marks 40 years of diplomatic ties between China and Malaysia, ties between both countries have been tested by the search for MH370.
The flight departed from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on March 8, carrying 12 crew members and 227 passengers.
As 154 passengers were from China, relatives and family members of the Chinese passengers have led a wave of criticism against Malaysia, with the tacit support of Beijing, the WSJ reported.
'Many of the families do not believe Putrajaya's official account that MH370 was lost at sea,' it said.
While publicly, Malaysia has attempted to placate angry relatives by sending high-level officials to meet them, Malaysia is seething privately.
'Malaysia feels this is a cynical ploy to exploit the families in order to deflect attention from China's domestic political concerns,' a person close to the probe in Malaysia told WSJ.
However, Chinese families who have been through the emotional whirlwind defended their actions, saying they had initiated it themselves.
Steven Wang, whose mother was aboard MH370, said the family members themselves had initiated the protests.
'If the majority of the passengers aboard MH370 had been Americans, Malaysia would be facing lawsuits left and right by now,' said Ei Sun Oh, a Malaysian academician.
Ei, a senior fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said: 'Beijing is eager to distract attention from its own limited capacity to locate MH370 by allowing protests to take place.
'What Beijing fears the most is its own population turning its anger against them.'
Roderic Wye, an associate fellow at UK thinktank Chatham House, told WSJ it was a matter of considerable pride for Beijing to show that it can stand up and protect its citizens abroad.
'China has not been able to show that,' he said.
China's ambassador to Malaysia, however, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur yesterday the Chinese government appreciated and was in gratitude to Malaysia for its efforts to locate the missing plane.
'We never said China is angry, we never said China is dissatisfied with the progress made so far,' Huang Huikang said during a media briefing at the Chinese embassy in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.
Huang downplayed the reactions of the families, saying that the outrage and anger felt by Chinese families are a 'natural and logical' reaction following the loss of their loved ones.
He said Putrajaya had shown inadequacy in some operations, in coordinating different departments and releasing contradictory and inconsistent information.
'But it is a very big disaster and nothing is perfect,' Huang told WSJ. – April 3, 2014.
Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, April 2, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
0 comments "Malaysia frets as China increases pressure over MH370, says report"
Post a Comment