A woman who lost her husband on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has criticised the Malaysian Transport Minister ’s time for “closure” comment as an insult and vowed to become the Malaysia Government’s “worst nightmare”.
“It’s not the time for closure, it’s time for the truth,” Danica Weeks told AirlineRatings.com.
“You don’t take from my family with no explanation.”
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On Thursday, Malaysia’s new Transport Minister Anthony Loke told the ABC’s South-East Asia correspondent Adam Harvey that after a four-year search failed, it was time to look for “closure”.
“We fully understand the feeling of the next of kin to the families but it has been … more than four years, I think we have to look for closure for the tragedy,” he said. “And I think it’s only fair to families that closure to be made and the final report to be made to the public.”
Loke said the Malaysian government was looking at releasing a final report on the tragedy within two months of the search ending on May 29.
He said he had yet to see the final report but he was committed to being “transparent not only to the families but the whole world, especially the aviation industry”.
But Mrs Weeks, who lost husband Paul on the plane, was unimpressed.
“I was hoping that the new Government would be more transparent but it appears not,” she said.
“We have been very patient, but now the gloves are off.
“How can they just walk away? It’s just not that easy. They took money to fly passengers from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing — you just can’t leave this.”
She said the Malaysian Government must find the aircraft because it is its international responsibility.
“The International Civil Aviation Organisation ought to bring pressure to bear on Malaysia to honour its obligations,” Mrs. Weeks said.
Mrs Weeks said the victims’ families would ramp up political pressure on the Malaysian, Australian and Chinese governments.
“I am seeking a meeting with the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to see what can be done,” she said, adding that Grace Nathan, whose mother Daisy was on MH370, was understood to be seeking an audience with the Malaysian Transport Minister.
Looking at what comes next, Mrs Weeks hopes that wreck hunters such as David Mearns, who found HMAS Sydney and the battlecruiser HMS Hood, can be involved and Microsoft’s Paul Allen, who has found a number of WWII Japanese and US warships, can be persuaded to help.
She believes the best strategy would be to search around the area that has been covered but expand to the east and west.
Within the aviation industry, there is a strong belief that a third search will be mounted next southern summer because there is too much at stake to just walk away.
