On 7 August, weeks before the first remains arrived, a national memorial service had been held in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne. Melbourne was chosen to host the service because sixteen of the Australians killed were from Victoria. Victoria Police had been tasked with leading the Australian teams on the MH17 operation, with state and federal governments also involved. The cathedral was packed with mourners as hundreds of people filled the building. Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the ambassador to the Netherlands, the high commissioner for Malaysia, community and religious leaders joined relatives at the Melbourne service.
Where the Dutch had refrained from making speeches, keeping their ceremony sober and impressive, in Australia there was a need to express verbally the grief and heartfelt sorrow for the victims and their families. As flags flew at half-mast on 7 August, Australia’s national day of mourning, Prime Minister Tony Abbott let the grief-stricken families know that the MH17 victims would never be abandoned or forgotten. ‘There will be a time to judge the guilty, but today we honour the dead and we grieve with the living,’ he said. ‘We cannot bring them back, but we will bring them home as far as we humanly can.’
The memorial at St Patrick’s was a multi-faith service; there were readings from the Torah, the Koran and the Bible as religious leaders of the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Islamic and Buddhist faiths offered their prayers at the cathedral. Around 160 immediate family members placed sprigs of wattle on a memorial wreath, shedding tears for those they had lost.
Tony Abbott went on to express solidarity for the loved ones of the passengers. ‘When those we love are snatched away, nothing can ease the pain,’ he said. ‘We who have not been bereaved must reach out to those who have and show by our love that love has not abandoned them.’
Federal opposition leader Bill Shorten told mourners that the memorial was not about why, or how, the disaster happened, but about those left behind. ‘Some will call it closure, some will call it acceptance, some will call it letting go. Whatever it is, it will take a while,’ he said.
Friday 22 August was declared the national day of mourning for the 42 Malaysians on board Flight MH17. Its government had been heavily criticised for its initial response to the missing jet, but Prime Minister Najib Razak had also won praise for brokering a deal with the pro-Russian separatists to ensure international access to the black box flight recorders and to allow for the return of all the bodies on MH17.
A plane carrying the remains of twenty of the people who had died in the tragedy touched down from Amsterdam just before 10am on Friday at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, as flags across the country flew at half-mast. Such a national day of mourning was the first ever to be held by Malaysia for ordinary citizens and had previously only been granted when a king or other important leader had died.
Much like the Dutch ceremony, the Malaysian one was muted, except for the roar of the plane’s engines. Eight men dressed in traditional Malay attire carried each flag-draped coffin out of the belly of the plane while Malaysia’s King Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah, Prime Minister Razak and other top officials looked on. Hearses and helicopters lined up to transport the victims on to their home towns for burial. In a slow march a team of eight pallbearers carried each casket to the hearses.
Dozens of Malaysia Airlines cabin crew and pilots gathered near the welcoming ceremony dressed in blue uniforms, holding Malaysian flags and flowers in honour of their deceased colleagues. The awareness that the incident had occurred only four months after Malaysia Airlines MH370 disappeared without a trace made it all the more difficult to come to terms with. Everyone was well aware that the families of the victims of MH370 might never witness a similar homecoming.
On the tarmac, relatives gathered together with political dignitaries for the solemn reception of the caskets. The motorcade carrying the twenty coffins moved slowly past the families and on towards two transport aircraft and three military helicopters that would fly seven of them to their respective home towns. The remaining coffins would be transported over land to their families.
Relatives waited at domestic airports across the country for the remains of their loved ones to arrive. A little over a month ago they had also awaited the arrival of their families and friends. They then still believed their loved ones to be alive and had expected to be reunited with them.
Malaysians all over the country had dressed themselves in black and the country, much the same as in the Netherlands, came to a standstill as people paused for a minute’s silence. In this multi-ethnic country, where tension between different groups and religions can run high, mourners were united in their grief, with ethnic Malays and ethnic Chinese standing side by side as they recited prayers for the dead. Kuala Lumpur City Hall ordered all entertainment outlets to cease operations for twenty-four hours while Penang ordered toll operators at the bridge to the island to stop collection during the scheduled minute’s silence.
Commuters who had streamed into the bustling streets of the capital earlier that morning were nearly all clad in black, including many Muslim women wearing black Islamic headscarves. State television continuously broadcast recitations from the Koran and photos of the Malaysian victims while newspapers bordered their front pages in black.
It had been a long and emotional journey for not only Malaysia but for all countries that had lost citizens.
Chapter 19
The Buk
Now that the bodies had come home, the important question remained: what had brought the airliner down? Was it an advanced surface-to-air missile, as most parties appeared to believe? If it was, who had fired it and why?
The most probable cause of the disaster was a missile attack, because the plane had been found in bits and pieces on the ground, spread over a large area. This must surely have been caused by an explosion of some kind: airliners simply don’t fall apart, as this one had definitely done, once they have reached a comfortable cruising altitude.
Journalists were now allowed unfettered access to photograph and film what was being called the crime scene. As masked men holding guns stood watch, journalists photographed plane parts, personal items and whatever else they came across. Photos of the aeroplane parts, quickly loaded onto the internet, made it apparent that the damage and markings to parts of the body of the plane were consistent with something external hitting it. The holes in the aluminium parts of the plane were dented inward and that meant the plane had been hit by an external force and not, for example, by a bomb blowing outward.
The Dutch Safety Board’s goal was to answer what, and not who, caused the crash. The DSB were not responsible for assigning the blame—that would become the Joint Investigation Team’s (JIT) job. Although the DSB had not been able to visit the site, they too believed that some kind of explosion from outside the plane was the cause, most probably a missile. Although they did not yet rule out something like a freak meteor or meteor rain, they couldn’t be sure until they were able to examine the shattered parts of the plane.
The general assumption in the Western countries was that the separatists or Russia had something to do with the plane crash, and this theory had been further boosted after rebels delayed and hindered the investigators’ access to the debris field. ‘A cover-up’ the Australian government said in a statement and, although the Dutch were more careful in venting their suspicions, the overall feeling in the Netherlands was one of distrust towards the role Russia had played.
The DSB were waiting ever more impatiently in Kiev for permission to gain access to the site. Their safety had to be guaranteed before they could set foot in the disaster area. The OSCE had been allowed to inspect the crash site for a short period, but the DSB would need to remain on site for a much longer period to do their work. In order to conduct an effective investigation, the investigators must have the opportunity to move around the entire investigation site freely, examine materials and traces from up close, and secure them for further study where necessary.