Speech Prime Minister Schoof at ceremony 10th anniversary MH17 air disaster

Speech | 17-07-2024

Ladies and gentlemen,

People often begin speeches by saying: ‘It’s great to have you all here today.’

Today, in a sense, the opposite is true: I would have liked nothing better than for us not to have been here today.
I wish that you could have been doing what you would have been doing any other Wednesday.
And that this monument had never existed.
Because that’s how things should have been.

It’s been 10 years.
10 years since that day.
I don’t have to tell you how much the world can change in ten years, and how much it has changed.
And yet, I know that for some of you, on 17 July 2014, time stopped.
That for you, since that day, nothing has changed at all – not after a year, not after 5 years, and not even now.  

The Dutch author Toon Tellegen wrote a beautiful poem on loss, which I’d like to share with you.
It’s called ‘Come Back’, and it goes like this:

Come back.
If I could say those words so quietly that no one could hear them.
That no one would even think I’d thought them…

And if someone could say back to me,
or even just think in reply, one morning:
Yes.

How sorely we wish it were possible.
To bring back our loved ones, in defiance of the laws of nature.
And even though we know, in a corner of our minds, that this will never happen, we still try to get as close as possible to that point, through all the things we can do.

By coming together.
By speaking their names.
And by keeping them alive in our hearts, our memories and our stories.
298 times.

This is the reason we’re here today.
The reason you’re here every year.
To feel that love is truly stronger than all those other emotions.
And though we can’t make our sorrow any less intense, by sharing our sadness we can soften its edge.

The power of togetherness stretches beyond our national borders.
Around the world we are connected to families who have lost loved ones. Some of them are here today.

To the grieving families and to the representatives of these countries I’d like to say: thank you for being here.
Today we come together in Vijfhuizen, but even on all those other days, when we are separated by great distances, we remain connected.
United not only in our grief, but also in our fight for justice.

Because this is the other thing that drives us.
And I don’t have to tell you what steps have already been taken, or the outcome of the criminal investigation, or who was convicted and what the sentence was.
You already know all this.
And you also know that a conviction isn’t the same thing as actually putting someone behind bars.  

And I know it too: justice takes time.
But we have the time.
And the patience.
And the perseverance.
That is my message to the guilty parties, and my promise to you.  

But these words are surely of little comfort for you today.
Today you are here for your son or daughter.
For your parents, your brother or your partner.
They are what brought you here.
In the knowledge that, here today in community with one another, you would find them.

And when you leave this place, I hope that feeling will stay with you.
Not only today, but every day.
Until you meet each other here again.
To tell your story again, to share your memories again.
And to keep alive what never died.  

Thank you.