Pay your respects to the victims of MH17 tragedy in this e-memorial

To remember and pay tribute to the 298 lives lost onboard flight MH17, the team at Malaysian-based app development firm Just Mobile created a virtual memorial that is open to the public. Every victim has his/her own dedicated profile, with a picture and a short biography. Visitors can pay tribute to them by leaving virtual flowers or Facebook messages, or share the individual’s memorial page on various social media platforms.

In essence, the team hopes that each of these people “will forever be remembered in this virtual memorial devoted to them.” In its early days, the tragedy of flight MH17 had quickly devolved into a political blame game, with accusations were hurled and returned in the media on a daily basis. Sadly, many forgot that actual lives were lost – human beings who were loved by others – till a reporter from Sky News, who was on the scene, lost his composure on air for just a few seconds. In his public apology, Colin Brazier recounts what was going on in his head in that moment:

And so during that lunchtime broadcast I stood above a pile of belongings, pointing to items strewn across the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a pink drinking flask. It looked familiar. My six-year-old daughter, Kitty, has one just like it […] I bent down and, what my Twitter critics cannot hear – because of the sound quality of internet replays of the broadcast – is that I had lost it. It is a cardinal sin of broadcasting, in my book anyway, to start blubbing on-air. I fought for some self-control, not thinking all that clearly as I did so.

It was precisely for this reason that Malaysian leader Najib Razak’s success in brokering a deal to bring home the remains of the victims – among them was his own step-grandmother – was widely applauded by the international community. At the end of the day, the real tragedy had nothing to do with politics – it was the loss of lives onboard the flight that fateful day.

See: On Malaysia’s National Day, 3 wishes for the local startup ecosystem

(Image credit: Flickr user notsophotogenic1)