Names of all 298 victims read at 10th commemoration of MH17 downing

From 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, people started gathering at the MH17 monument in Vijfhuizen Park, near Schiphol, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the MH17 disaster. The ceremony started at 2:00 p.m. and included speeches, the reading of all 298 victims’ names, and two minutes of silence.

Flight MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian separatists over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014. All 298 people on board, including 196 Dutch people, were killed.

Around 1,500 attendees were invited to the commemoration, including surviving relatives, Dutch dignitaries, and representatives from Malaysia, Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Ukraine. King Willem-Alexander, Prime Minister Dick Schoof, and Piet Ploeg, who represents the Dutch surviving relatives in the foundation Vliegramp MH17, were among the attendees.

This was Schoof’s first MH17 commemoration as Dutch Prime Minister. In his speech, he quoted from the poem “Kom terug” by Toon Tellegen. The pursuit of justice “requires patience,” he said, and the Netherlands has that. “We have the time. The patience. The perseverance,” Schoof said. That is also his “message to the guilty.” Many steps towards justice have already been taken, but “a conviction is not the same as having someone behind bars.”

He also spoke to the victims’ loved ones. “Today, you are here for your son or daughter. For your parents, your brother, or your loved one. It is they who brought you here. In the knowledge that you will find them here today, meeting with each other. And, when you leave here again, I hope that feeling travels with you. Not only today, but also all the other days. To share again. And to keep alive what never dies.”

Ploeg, a surviving relative himself, spoke of ten years of longing. “We look back on ten years of missing, of melancholy birthdays, lonely Christmases, and ten years in which we felt that holes had been punched in our lives.” It has also been a decade of searching for the truth and justice. “Of endless procedures in which the responsible state only obstructs. Ten years of fighting against Russia’s denials and total indifference to the suffering caused.”

Ploeg thanked former Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his Cabinets for their efforts in bringing those responsible for this tragedy to justice. “We hope and trust that the new Cabinet will continue the line of the previous Cabinets with regard to MH17.”

The national commemoration was not the only one remembering the victims today. Smaller commemorations were also held in several other places in the Netherlands.

Hilversum, which lost 15 residents to the disaster, commemorated them in the Dudokpark. Mayor Gerhard van den Top, who took office two years ago, addressed the surviving relatives who attended. “I was not there during those terrible days. I was not in that indescribable uncertainty that you experienced on that day. I did not have to sign that list, I didn’t get that phone call, I didn’t suffer the unbearable loss of a child, a brother, a cousin, a parent, an entire family, a loved one.”

However, according to Van den Top, the “disastrous date” of 17 July 2014 has been “forever etched into the soul of Hilversum and our country,” and as mayor, he bears that. “I am here to let you know that I feel your pain and also bear your loss,” he said.

Several politicians also marked the day by posting about MH17 on social media. Minister Caspar Veldkamp of Foreign Affairs spoke of a “black day” that left an “open wound” in the Netherlands. “298 innocent people, including 196 Dutch, were killed when MH17 was shot down.” The Netherlands continues to do everything it can to ensure justice for “this enormous loss of the relatives of the victims.”

Justice Minister David van Weel had the flag hanging at half-mast at his Ministry “in memory of everyone who died in the downing of flight MH17,” he said. “Their loss leaves a deep wound in our society. My thoughts are with the relatives who have to live with this immense sadness.”

VVD leader Dilan Yeşilgöz said that, for the Netherlands, “there is a world before 17 July 2014 and a world after.” She described the disaster as “one of the most moving events” the Netherlands has ever experienced. “My thoughts are with the families and friends of those who lost their lives.”

D66 leader Rob Jetten spoke of “a heartbreaking disaster that is deeply etched in our memories. Today, my thoughts are with the victims and their relatives.”

PvdD leader Esther Ouwehand called the downing of the plane “a horrible crime” and expressed condolences to everyone who lost loved ones.