By Khairie Hisyam
Here we go again: another Ramadhan ending and another Aidilfitri coming. But events in the past year have put a dampener on our collective moods. Maybe that’s a good thing.
This Friday, July 17, we say goodbye to Ramadhan and hello to Syawal – as in Aidilfitri or, colloquially, Raya – for the year 1436, according to the Islamic calendar. Yet somehow the festive cheer is missing.
There is much reason for gloom ahead of what is supposed to be the most cheerful day of the year for Muslims. Our ringgit is tanking. Despite what economists say, the goods and services tax (GST) has bitten hard, even more so the lower you are on the economic ladder.
Following the news sends you deeper down the depressing spiral. You hear one scandalous expose after another. No one seems to be held to account urgently for them. The statements that follow are so heart-wrenchingly twisted in logic that you wonder if the people who said them realise most Malaysians can actually think.
All these apart, there is one more reason for added poignancy this Raya: July 17 is the one-year anniversary of the MH17 tragedy.
It had been a surreal morning as the news broke in the wee hours of that date in 2014. There we were, 132 days after that ill-fated flight MH370 went dark, hearing that another Malaysia Airlines plane was shot out of the sky near Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine.
Onboard were 283 passengers and 15 crew members. As we struggled to comprehend the disaster, we began seeing the faces of those killed.
There was a family of five, heading home for Raya ahead of a fresh new start. A loving father coming home to his wife and children. A mother, missing her daughter, flying home. On social media, we saw a brief video clip taken by one student going home for Raya, showing the calm atmosphere inside the plane just before take-off.
There were no survivors. They all died. The families waiting for them at the airport never saw them walk out the arrival hall. It would be months later before the families would be reunited with their loved ones, some in charred bits and pieces scavenged from the crash site and confirmed through DNA testing.
One year on, the tragedy still makes no sense whatsoever. Why did our loved ones die? Who shot them out of the sky? We don’t know. We are still trying to find out.
Last September, our prime minister said intelligence reports on the disaster were “pretty conclusive”, adding we were now working to assemble a presentable body of evidence in court. By November, we were officially part of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) alongside Belgium, Ukraine, Australia, and The Netherlands, who leads the way.
More recently, in March, the JIT posted a video in Russian calling for witnesses in the surrounding region of the crash site – Donetsk and Luhansk – to come forward and engage them. The response was good. And then the idea of an international tribunal came up to prosecute suspects.
The JIT put forward the proposal, asking for a United Nations (UN) tribunal to try those responsible for the disaster. But the Russians shot it down, calling it “not timely and counterproductive”.
Last week, we circulated a draft resolution to establish such a UN tribunal among the 15 members of the Security Council but received similar rebuke from the Russians. Apparently, they thought it was “an attempt to organise a grandiose, political show, which only damages efforts to find the guilty parties”.
It is anything but. Bringing justice and closure for the still-grieving families of the 298 should remain top of the agenda. And having such a tribunal is an important step.
The Russian rejection is puzzling considering last year the Security Council, in which they sit and have the veto vote, unanimously passed Resolution 2166 which fully supports “efforts to establish a full, thorough and independent international investigation into the incident in accordance with international civil aviation guidelines” and urging all UN members “to provide any requested assistance to civil and criminal investigations”.
All this makes less sense still for those who lost family in the disaster. Will Raya ever be the same, having lost people dearer to you than life itself just before one before?
As we engage in what seems to be muted celebration this year, let us not forget the tragedies we have recently endured. Spare a thought for those still grieving, whose hearts still gape open, wounded. Remember the less fortunate, for whom having a simple bite to eat is heaven on earth.
Because that has always been the the real point of Aidilfitri: empathy. We’re all in this mess of a nation together. Let Raya this year remind us of that.
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