pongyee
註冊: 2006-03-04
上載我的肖像
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 Re: 另一場攻防戰揭幕 Post time: 3 月 29 日 |
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Authorities in Kuala Lumpur have been on the defensive since the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight went missing on March 8 with 239 people aboard, most of them Chinese citizens.
In addition to near-daily displays of fury from Chinese relatives, China's tightly controlled state media have heaped opprobrium on the Malaysian government and airline, while its secretive Communist government has urged more transparency in the investigation.
Malaysia has largely held fire -- China, the world's second-largest economy, is its primary trading partner. But the strain is starting to show.
Defence and Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who had trodden lightly on China in often-testy press briefings on the crisis, was asked by a Chinese reporter Tuesday about delays and misdirections in Malaysia's initial response.
Hishammuddin shot back that time was wasted early in the search by Chinese satellite images showing purported plane debris in the South China Sea. Beijing later acknowledged the images were false, and the search for wreckage is now focussed far away in the Indian Ocean.
A day later, the minister insisted that "history will judge us well".
"Anybody who has gone through this, what we have gone through... has indicated to me that we have done quite an admirable job," he said, adding that the plane also carried 50 Malaysian citizens.
"For the Chinese families there, they must also understand that we in Malaysia have also lost loved ones."
- 'Prove your friendship' -
State-controlled press have joined in, with the Malay Mail newspaper running a front-page editorial Friday headlined "MH370 -- Malaysia under siege".
"Countries whom we call friends must now do more to prove their friendship," it said.
"These governments seem happy to allow their citizens to complain and even accuse us of withholding information."
The editorial urged Prime Minister Najib Razak to rally Malaysians to defend the country's "reputation and honour".
But in their daily press briefings, Malaysian officials have made a series of contradictory statements that added to the confusion.
Notably, there have been about-turns regarding the crucial sequence of events in the plane's cockpit before it veered off course, and Malaysia's armed forces have been criticised for failing to intercept the diverted plane when it appeared on military radar.
Such mis-steps have fuelled families' anger. Scores of Chinese relatives were allowed by authorities in Beijing -- who normally keep a tight lid on public dissent -- to protest at Malaysia's embassy on Tuesday, shouting that Kuala Lumpur authorities were "murderers".
A day later, relatives called the ambassador a "liar" and a "rogue" during a meeting in Beijing.
In a letter sent to Beijing's special envoy in Kuala Lumpur on the crisis, families denounced Malaysia's behaviour as "irresponsible" and "inhumane" and urged the Chinese government to set up its own inquiry.
Relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers also have set up a committee to begin discussions with US lawyers about a potential lawsuit against the airline.
- 'Come clean about Tiananmen Square' -
Malaysia Airlines has deployed more than 700 "caregivers" to support Chinese and other next of kin, who have been given hotel accommodation as well as initial financial assistance of $5,000 per passenger, with more offered.
The New Straits Times, a Malaysian government mouthpiece, said in a Thursday editorial that "even abject misery cannot excuse the accusation of murder", echoing similar commentaries in other Malaysian media.
Criticism from China is particularly rankling for the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which champions the interests of multi-cultural Malaysia's majority group, Muslim ethnic Malays.
UMNO regularly stokes Malay resentment against the country's sizable ethnic Chinese community, including reviving memories of an ethnic-Chinese communist insurgency in the 1950s.
Jahabar Sadiq, editor of the independent web portal Malaysian Insider, called the Chinese criticism unfair, noting that Beijing, with its far greater air and sea capability, also has been unable to find the plane.
"The search for this missing plane has shown them the limits of their technology, their muscle. It puts China in its place," he said.
Malaysian social media sites have bristled with anger over the Chinese calls for transparency.
"China demanding the full truth and complete transparency about the plane crash? How about they come clean about Tiananmen Square first?" read one representative posting, referring to China's violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in 1989.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/22227657/under-siege-malaysians-hit-back-at-china-over-mh370/
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pongyee
註冊: 2006-03-04
上載我的肖像
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| Re: 另一場攻防戰揭幕 Post time: 3 月 29 日 |
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Two passengers on the Malaysian Boeing 777 flight thought to have crashed into the Indian Ocean triggered an international terrorism probe this month after it was revealed they were travelling on stolen passports.
It was later reported that the pair were illegal migrants from Iran seeking a better life in the West and Malaysian authorities were criticised for not using an Interpol database designed to identify stolen passports.
But on Wednesday Malaysian Interior minister Zahid Hamidi told parliament in Kuala Lumpur that consulting the database was too time consuming for immigration officers and caused airport delays.
Interpol shot back saying Malaysia?s decision to not consult the database before allowing travellers to enter the country or board planes "cannot be defended by falsely blaming technology or Interpol".
"If there is any responsibility or blame for this failure, it rests solely with Malaysia's Immigration Department," the France-based organisation said.
Interpol said that it takes "just seconds to reveal whether a passport is listed, with recent tests providing results in 0.2 seconds".
While some countries consult the database more than a hundred million times a year, "in 2014 prior to the tragic disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370, Malaysia?s Immigration Department did not conduct a single check of passengers' passports against Interpol's databases," the agency said.
"Had Malaysia consulted Interpol's database, the fact that both passengers were using stolen passports would have been discovered almost instantaneously," it added.
Interpol said earlier this month the two men were believed to have travelled to Kuala Lumpur via Doha using Iranian passports.
They then switched to stolen Austrian and Italian passports to board the Beijing-bound flight which vanished with 239 people on board.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/22240382/interpol-hits-back-at-malaysias-stolen-passport-database-claims/
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