Sunflowers and tributes as Netherlands honours MH17 dead

It's at just this time of summer, from mid-July to mid-August, that the Netherlands virtually empties out on holidays – which is why, on this day last year, the sunflower fields of eastern Ukraine were strewn with children's toys, holiday novels and torn suitcases.

Almost 2,000 people attended a ceremony on Friday to mark the first anniversary of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 – and there wasn't a single holidaymaker leaving the country a year on who didn't recall the tragedy with a shudder for the 298 passengers and crew who died.

For the relatives, friends and extended families – many of them still angry over the lack of certainty in identifying those responsible – it was a moment of respite from 12 months of controversy, a moment where the only important thing was to remember.

That’s why many of those arriving for the commemoration carried single sunflowers, seeking some form of tangible connection, no matter how inadequate, to the loved ones – adults, children and even toddlers – lost so cruelly thousands of kilometres from home.

Inside the conference centre-turned-ecumenical church was a poignant wall, many metres long, of stuffed toys, flowers, drawings, and personal messages drawn from the enormous sea of tributes laid in departure hall 3 at Schiphol airport in the weeks after the tragedy.

Premier Mark Rutte, foreign minister Bert Koenders, and justice minister Ard van der Steur were among the dignitaries, but the ceremony was in essence a private one, and the occasion was not always solemn – it included music, dancing and shared reminiscences of happier days.

There was no talk of a possible UN tribunal to prosecute suspects if and when they are identified – a proposal Rutte has argued could help secure justice, but which Russian president Vladimir Putin rejected on Friday as "premature" in advance of a final investigators' report, due in October.

At the heart of the afternoon was a roll-call of the dead – 196 of the 298 who died were Dutch, and the remains of all but two have been identified – some of the names already becoming eerily familiar after the national day of mourning last November.

Many relatives said later how familiar, too, even the hall had become – this was where they gathered in the hours after the disaster, away from the media glare, to be briefed by the emergency services – and here too was where they learned months later about the complexity of the identification process, completed earlier this month.

Flags flew at half-mast all over the country, and flowers and candles were laid once again at Schiphol – where Flight MH17 took off en route to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur – many of them by passing tourists.

The airport authorities tweeted: “Today our thoughts are with the victims of the MH17 tragedy and their relatives and friends.” The tweet was adorned by a black ribbon.

And at Hilversum, where the remains were pieced together by forensics experts, there was another sunflower tribute – this time with blooms grown from seeds collected at the crash site in Ukraine.

Sunflowers will never be seen in the same way again in the Netherlands.