MH17: In memory of the innocent lives lost

“We are doing this because we lost a dear friend, Shuba Jaya,” said television personality, Sivakumar Jeyabalan, or popularly known as SK.

SK is part of a small group of local Tamil artists who were friends of the talented actress, who was on board the aircraft with her Dutch husband, Paul Goes, and 21-month old daughter, Kaela.

The group set up a small table with pictures and newspaper clippings of Shuba on a sidewalk in the Jalan Telawi area on Monday and Wednesday night. Soon, more people gathered, friends and strangers alike, to pay their respects. Candles were lit and flowers were laid down on the table and around it.

“I brought along 500 candles and it was all gone in a few hours. Malaysians were shocked and wanted to grieve,” said SK.

In the Netherlands, when the first 40 bodies arrived at Eindhoven from Kharkiv on Wednesday, they were received with the highest honour the Dutch could bestow. And it was rightly deserved as the bodies had been lying at the crash site for nearly five days under the control of pro-Russian rebels.

Soldiers in full salute lined the runway grounds of where the Dutch Hercules C-130 military plane had landed as the 40 coffins were unloaded and transferred into 40 waiting hearses by pall bearers in full uniforms.

The hearses then left the airport for the Corporal Van Oudheusden barracks in Hilversum in single file motorcade with security escort. Thousands of people gathered along the highway, sobbing, clapping and throwing flowers, to receive the bodies.

“We were thinking, is this person in this casket, is this an Australian? So today they were all Australians and they were all Dutch and they were all of the other nations,” said the Governor-General of Australia Peter Cosgrove, who was in attendance, as quoted by ABC News.

This tribute will continue for every flight that comes in to Eindhoven bringing in the bodies and remains of the victims of flight MH17. To date, 114 bodies have arrived in the Netherlands for identification.