Tensions mount over memorial to 9/11 victims

Tensions over how to pay proper respect to the dead are overshadowing New York’s 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero as a gap widens between survivors and the general public 11 years after the event.

On the eve of the latest annual remembrance of the day hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the once overwhelming sense of national solidarity appears to be fading.

At the sombre site — which only opened last year to mark the spot where more than 2,600 people were killed on Sep 11, 2001, out of a total of nearly 3,000 dead — police, private security guards, and volunteer guides are enforcing strict guidelines on decorum.