https://www.ft.com/content/57f34736-ae76-11e3-aaa6-00144feab7de
Beijing dismisses Uighur link to missing Malaysian airliner
Tom Mitchell in Beijing, and Jeremy Grant and Demetri Sevastopulo in Kuala Lumpur MARCH 19 2014
Background checks on the 154 Chinese citizens aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, including a Uighur passenger from the northwestern region of Xinjiang, had not turned up any evidence of their possible involvement in a hijack attempt, China has said. The announcement by Huang Huikang, Beijing’s ambassador to Kuala Lumpur, reported by China Central Television on Tuesday, came as Malaysia confirmed it had asked “every relevant country” in the search area that has access to satellite data to provide what information they could. A number of Chinese ships joined the expanding international search – an area which now covers 2.5m square nautical miles – for the missing aeroplane on Wednesday, according to Chinese state media. Xinhua said nine ships, including China’s largest rescue vessel, would set sail from Singapore for waters southeast of the Bay of Bengal and west of Indonesia. It said the Chinese ships would focus on maritime areas near the Indonesian island of Sumatra, away from regions being combed for wreckage by other countries. Chinese authorities had earlier initiated a search of their own territory. The “northern corridor” that Malaysian authorities say the aircraft may have flown along passes over the Chinese regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. At the same time China appeared to tone down earlier criticism of Malaysia’s handling of the crisis, now in its 11th day. “The Malaysian government has been doing its best in the search and investigation,” Mr Huang was quoted as saying by China’s official Xinhua news agency. “But it lacks experience and capability to handle this kind of incident.” Malaysia is leading a multinational search and rescue effort involving 26 nations in two flight path “corridors” identified as the likely areas to which the airliner may have flown hours after contact was lost with ground. Flight MH370 went missing with 239 people on board on March 8, less than an hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese. Some relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers aboard the flight on Tuesday threatened in Beijing to go on hunger strike in protest at what they see as insufficient information from Malaysia. Thailand belatedly provided some additional information on Tuesday when Thai military officials said their radar had showed an unidentified aircraft, possibly flight MH370, flying toward the Malacca strait, minutes after the Malaysian jet's transponder signal was lost. It took 10 days to report the data “because we did not pay attention to it”, said air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn. When the jet was first reported missing, comments circulated on Chinese social media networks about possible foul play by Uighur activists fighting for an independent homeland. The aircraft’s disappearance occurred just a week after eight attackers, identified by the Chinese government as “separatists” from Xinjiang, killed 29 people in a terrorist attack at a train station in southwestern Yunnan province. Such suspicions were heightened when Chinese state media released a list of the missing aircraft’s passengers with the name of the Uighur passenger obscured. It also emerged that two other passengers were travelling on stolen passports. The Uighur passenger, however, was identified as a 35-year-old artist on his first trip outside of China. He was travelling with an official delegation, while the two mystery passengers were identified as Iranians and most likely asylum seekers. MH370 search widens Subtitles unavailable Xinhua also reported that China’s Premier Li Keqiang had asked Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, to provide more information on flight MH370, and in a “timely, accurate and comprehensive” manner. China is Malaysia’s biggest trading partner. In October last year Malaysia and China pledged to boost bilateral trade to Rm511bn ($155bn), from Rm181bn in 2012, the latest year for which figures were available. While Malaysia has been improving the flow of information and has a firmer grip on the investigation than in its early stages, the country’s defence minister and acting transport minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, was forced on Tuesday to revise his government’s version of when the aircraft’s air communications were disabled after discrepancies emerged with an earlier statement. “The co-operation we saw in the first phase continues in this new phase. In fact, there is even more commitment to assist us in this much larger and more complex multinational operation,” he told a daily news conference in Kuala Lumpur. China had deployed more than 10 maritime vessels, a number of aircraft and 21 satellites to help with the expanding international search for the missing aircraft, Chinese media reported. Meanwhile, Australian aircraft have begun searching for the missing aircraft in the Indian Ocean after agreeing to take responsibility for the southern part of the search zone following talks with Kuala Lumpur. Canberra initially deployed two Orion aircraft to help the international search effort. On Monday Tony Abbott, Australia’s prime minister, pledged to provide two more Orion aircraft following a call with his Malaysian counterpart, Mr Najib.
Additional reporting by Julie Zhu in Hong Kong, Jamie Smyth in Sydney and agencies
