Son of Flight MH370 passenger conflicted over honouring the dead

KUALA LUMPUR: Every spring, China observes the Qingming tomb-sweeping festival, where families visit and clean the graves of their ancestors, making ritual offerings and paying respects.

But for Chinese national Jiang Hui, 50, Qingming presents a dilemma: how to honour his mother, Jiang Cui Yun, who vanished 10 years ago aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

“It feels wrong to go and pay respects to my mother because she hasn’t been declared dead. But if I don’t pay respects, I miss her terribly and feel unable to do anything else in her memory,” Jiang told Reuters in the Malaysian capital.

“There doesn’t seem to be any alternative method available. Therefore, on that day, it’s like being in an unbearable situation where neither doing nor not doing feels right.”

Jiang’s mother, who was 71 when she went missing, was among 239 passengers and crew, including 153 Chinese citizens, aboard Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 which disappeared on March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries.

Two underwater searches conducted between 2015 and 2018 in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane was believed to have crashed, have proved fruitless.

Jiang said he has struggled to explain his mother’s whereabouts to his young son and often breaks down emotionally.