Families hold vigil one month after Malaysian flight disappeared
Posted April 8, 2014 5:26 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Chinese families of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 passengers held a candlelight vigil in Beijing on Tuesday, marking the one month anniversary of the aircraft’s disappearance.
Families held the vigil at exactly 12:41 a.m. local time (16:41 GMT), marking the exact time when the flight took off on SMarch 8, 2014.
Family members in attendance could be seen weeping for their lost loved ones.
Steve Wang, one of the organisers of the vigil, said that despite the recent sadness, the affected families must somehow pull through.
“It’s already been a month. You could say that in this month everyone has experienced a lot of pain, tragedy, despair, and (feelings of) helplessness. They’ve experienced much of this. But I believe that everybody will be able to get through this, so today, I wanted to say to everyone, we don’t need to cry today. Today we want to say let’s make an effort,” he said.
Family members have said that their greatest hope at the moment is to find the plane, which the Malaysian government announced late last month probably crashed in the south Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board.
A Chinese patrol ship hunting for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner detected a pulse signal in the south Indian Ocean on Saturday, the state news agency Xinhua reported, in a possible indicator of the underwater beacon from a plane’s “black box”.
Malaysia said on Saturday it had launched a formal investigation into the plane’s disappearance that would include experts from Australia, the United States, China, Britain and France.
Malaysian authorities have faced heavy criticism, particularly from China, for mismanaging the search and holding back information. Most of the 227 passengers were Chinese.
