NEW YORK (AFP) - Tensions over how to pay proper respect to the dead are overshadowing New York's memorial at Ground Zero as a gap widens between survivors and the general, more forgetful public 11 years after 9/11.
Just days before the latest annual remembrance of the cataclysm that saw hijacked airliners flown into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, the once overwhelming sense of national solidarity appears to have faded.
At the sombre site, which only opened last year to mark the spot where over 2,600 people were killed on September 11, 2001 out of a total of nearly 3,000 dead, police, private security guards and volunteer guides are enforcing strict rules on decorum.
The measures are aimed at curbing what some relatives of victims see as rising disrespect, ranging from picnics under the newly planted oak trees to an incident in June when visiting high school students threw trash into one of the black pools marking the footprints of the fallen towers.
source: straitstimes.com
