SOUTH INDIAN OCEAN – The ongoing saga of locating Malaysia Airlines flight 370 took another disappointing turn today as search planes discovered that many of the large objects seen by satellites were just floating rafts full of Rohingya refugees.
At approximately 8am this morning Perth time, a US navy P8 aircraft passed over what initially appeared to be a large floating object, the first human contact with a possible piece of the missing Boeing 777 jet, which vanished from radar on March 8. However, once the plane got close enough, the pilots realized that the object was in fact several hundred starving, dehydrated, stateless persons waving from a large pontoon.
“It’s disappointing that we didn’t find any wreckage, but we’re determined to keep looking,” said Lt Commander Adam Shantz. “There’s a lot of unrelated debris floating in the ocean, and we knew that from the start.”
The US navy reported that while there were some corpses floating in the sea nearby the raft, it was assumed that the bodies were Rohingya, and therefore of no interest to the search effort, or to any of the 25 nations involved. Once it was established that the refugees were unrelated to flight MH370, the navy plane flew on and headed towards other coordinates that matched promising satellite data.
“We don’t want to waste any resources, not even for an hour,” added Shantz. “People are depending on us.”
The news was shared with the grieving families of the missing passengers at a news conference.
“We are saddened to report that some of the satellite photos provided by the French authorities turned out to be several hundred living persons who are not material to our investigation, rather than dead persons who might be,” said Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. “However, with every lead eliminated, we are in fact narrowing our search field and hope to recover a piece of the plane soon.”
With grieving family members already initiating lawsuits against the Malaysian government, which they accuse of withholding key information, and with the Chinese state demanding access to all data used in the investigation, pressure is mounting on the Malaysians to come up with at least a single confirmed piece of the actual wreckage to verify their conviction that the plane crashed in the south Indian Ocean.
Many family members expressed anger at the discovery of the floating Rohingya refugees.
“If these satellite images can’t tell the difference between our loved ones and these dark-skinned people, then the technology is suspect,” said one woman whose husband was aboard flight 370. “The ocean could be full of floating refugees. We could be chasing phantoms for weeks.”
According to oceanographer Martin Teel, the south Indian Ocean contains several areas known as “gyres,” or swirling eddies of currents where garbage and other items disposed of by human society end up, floating in endless circles indefinitely.
“It’s not surprising that these Rohingya appeared on satellite images, causing confusion to the search efforts,” he said. “From what I understand, they have been thrown out of Bangladesh, Burma, and Thailand already. They’re exactly the kind of detritus that ends up in international waters.”
“The solution going forward is clear,” he added. “Stop disposing of refugees at sea. That’s no way to treat our oceans.”
Despite the setback, the Malaysian government expressed confidence that the combined efforts and assets of the searching nations would soon find something of value.
“A piece of wing, a life jacket, even a floating body,” said one official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. “We know that it’s out there, and we can’t let any distractions prevent us from focusing on what’s important.”
No Rohingya were available for comment.
