RMN flypast tragedy
Speculation harms and hurts
ANATION is in mourning for 10 lives lost in the Royal Malaysian Navy’s (RMN) helicopter rehearsal tragedy on Tuesday. And so are the families of the victims. The death of one who is near and dear is always difficult to deal with. Grant the families the privacy to mourn. Do not hurt their feelings by floating this and that theory for the cause of the collision. Such intrusions only add to the pain on the families of the deceased. So does the spreading of videos or posting of pictures on social media. As Kelantan mufti Datuk Mohamad Shukri Mohamad put it yesterday, doing either is a prohibited act in Islam. The reasons are not hard to fathom. Such acts hurt the families by humiliating the dead. Do not be the cause of traumas in others. Cease and desist, would be our advice. Never exchange ethics for a minute or two’s fame in cyberspace.
The priority now is to let the investigation take its course. And the Defence Ministry has set an investigation board in motion almost immediately, with the promise of an interim report in two weeks and a final report in a month. Let’s give the board the time. Speculation as to the cause of the tragedy only disturbs the work of the board. In Tuesday’s flypast drill, two RMN helicopters — AgustaWestland AW139 Maritime Operations Helicopter M503-3 and Eurocopter AS555 Fennec M502-6 — collided mid-air at 9.32am, 29 minutes into their flight from Padang Sitiawan. Sense and sensibilities are involved here. So tread carefully, we say to the “theory floaters” of social media. We have appealed enough to sensibilities, so we shall say no more. As for sense, we offer two reasons why cyberspace theorists shouldn’t dare tread in the domain of experts. Firstly, those on a flight of fancy were not there when the collision happened. Neither were they when the helicopters took off. Know this. Fancy is not fact, which is the realm of experts. And in the case of the RMN investigation, the realm is that of the investigation board. Members of the board know their helicopters and pilots best.
Clearly, the cyberspace theorists do not, our second point. They can’t tell a Fennec from a Eurostar. Neither can they tell a propeller from a rotor blade. What more of the helicopters’ control systems. Granted, one or two who know a thing or two about helicopters did speculate when they shouldn’t have. But one did end with a caveat: further investigation is necessary to determine the real cause of the accident. Bad precedent, we have to say. Sensible people will know conclusions mustn’t come before the findings. And findings aren’t possible without investigation. There is a natural order of things. Everything has its proper place. Disturb this and you go against the grain of the natural order. Like putting the cart before the horse. No movement will take place in this reversed order. Ethics reflects the natural order by demanding a proper place for everything in its realm. Yes, there is ethics in investigations. Conclusions must never precede findings, which provide the basis for the former. Those with flights of fancy — be they so-called experts or fiction spewers — will do well to follow the dictates of ethics. Harming the investigation is harming the dead and their loved ones.
Sense and sensibilities are involved here. So tread carefully, we say to the ‘theory floaters’ of social media.