Eleven years after the September 11 terror attacks leveled the World Trade Center, work on a museum at the site, which was to open on the anniversary this year, has stopped - because of financial and power disputes. At the same time, family members of some of the victims are fighting the museum’s plan to preserve unidentified human remains in an underground repository.
The National September 11 Memorial in New York has been open since last year - drawing more than four million visitors. But work stopped months ago on the attached museum - because of financial disagreements between the Port Authority, which owned the destroyed Twin Towers, and the foundation that is building the museum. Monica Iken's husband, Michael, died in the attacks.
“It’s an embarrassment for the world to see," said Monica Iken. "They come there, and I’ve been there several times where people come up to me and say, ‘Where’s the museum, why is it not open?’ How do you explain that: ‘Oh, because we’re fighting over some money?’”
The museum's exhibits will tell the stories of the attacks and of the people who died. There will also be displays about al Qaida and the 9/11 plotters - although some family members, like Jim Riches, who lost his son Jimmy, think those should be limited to side-displays.
“If you want to see their pictures, let them go into the kiosk and look at their picture, but I think you’ve made it more like a Hall of Fame for the terrorists, and that’s the way I feel, by putting their pictures up there," said Jim Riches.
But it is a collection that will never be shown that has caused the fiercest controversy: a repository for 9,000 unidentified fragments of human bone and tissue. It will be seven stories underground and off-limits to all but family members and the medical examiner. Riches and members of 16 other families have filed a lawsuit: they want the remains entombed above ground.
“There’s no museums, I don’t think, in the whole country that put human remains in the museum, and you also would have to get the permission of the family members to do such a thing," said Riches.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, chairman of the museum foundation, says the repository is needed for possible future DNA identification.
“One of the centerpieces of the museum, in terms of visibility and respect, is where you put the unidentified remains, and it is not just in a small place, it is in a facility that also has what the medical examiner thinks will be necessary down the road as technology gets better," said Bloomberg.
Another issue: an atheists’ group has filed suit to stop the display of a cross-shaped steel beam that became an icon for recovery workers at Ground Zero. The foundation responds that it is being displayed as an artifact, not as a religious object.
off-limits: 禁止进入的，禁区的