Missing plane protest

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Relatives of Chinese passengers onboard the Malaysia Airlines plane, MH370 protest with placards one of which reads " MH370, Don't let us wait too long" as they march towards the Malaysian embassy in Beijing, China, Tuesday. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Furious that Malaysia has declared their loved ones lost in a plane crash without physical evidence, Chinese relatives of the missing marched Tuesday to the Malaysian Embassy, where they threw plastic water bottles, tried to rush the gate and chanted, "Liars!"

The Chinese government, meanwhile, demanded that Malaysia turn over the satellite data it used to conclude that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean with no survivors after turning back from its flight path to Beijing on March 8.

Among the flight's 239 passengers, 153 were Chinese nationals, making the incident a highly emotional one for Beijing, and the government's demand reflected the desire among many Chinese relatives of passengers for more conclusive information on the plane's fate.

Nearly 100 relatives and their supporters marched to the embassy in the late morning, wearing white T-shirts that read "Let's pray for MH370" as they held banners and chanted for about three hours.

"Tell the truth! Return our relatives!" they shouted. There was a heavy police presence at the embassy, and a brief scuffle when some relatives tried to get past police to approach journalists, but no effort was made to break up the demonstration. The group presented a letter of protest to the embassy before getting into several buses and departing.

Many of the relatives maintain they are not being told the whole truth — a not-uncommon mindset among Chinese accustomed to dealing with authorities in their own opaque, single-party communist state. Though some have expressed resignation that their relatives probably are dead, they have accused Malaysian authorities of foot-dragging and withholding information early in the search, when there might have been some chance to save the plane.

"I want the truth, and I believe they have been hiding some information from us," said Wang Zhen, who was not part of Tuesday's demonstration but whose parents were aboard the missing plane. "It remains an enigma as to what happened after the plane turned around. What happened when the plane continued to fly?

"I am still hoping for my parents' return, even though I understand the probability is very, very low," Wang said in a telephone interview.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is sending a vice foreign minister to Kuala Lumpur as his special envoy to deal with the matter of the missing plane, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng told Malaysia's ambassador to Beijing that China wanted to know what exactly led Malaysia to announce Monday night that the plane had been lost, China's Foreign Ministry said on its website Tuesday.

"We demand the Malaysian side to make clear the specific basis on which they come to this judgment," Xie was quoted as telling Datuk Iskandar Bin Sarudin.

There was no immediate response from the Malaysian side.