How burying a tradition fuelled black market in corpse-selling
Fiona Tam 24 October 2009
It’s a simple truth: people who don’t agree with a law find ways to get around it. It’s true in life, and now it’s true even in death.
Chinese tradition holds that interred loved ones provide blessings and protection to the living, so burial is still the preferred method of disposal of bodies. But burying nine million people a year takes up precious farmland, so the Communist Party has discouraged the practice since 1956. At least 10 municipalities and provinces - including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong - went even further and banned it altogether.
Cremation is the government’s preferred method of disposing of remains, but in 2007 only 4.4 million corpses - 48.2 per cent of the dead - were sent to the country’s 1,635 crematoriums, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. That was far below the authorities’ expectations.
Although Dou Yupei, deputy civil affairs minister, praised Guangdong for achieving a 100 per cent cremation rate, the province’s crematoriums were found to have used corpses stolen from tombs or bought from corpse-selling gangs to reach that score.
The result of denying people a choice has been the emergence of a black market in human bodies in the province. Some people are willing to pay up to 10,000 yuan (HK$11,400) for a stranger’s corpse to give to the crematorium while they sneak out to bury their loved one. State media have reported that many gangs steal corpses from graves or even resort to murder to meet demand.
In an investigative report entitled “Deadly harvest” in November, the South China Morning Post told of an illegal corpse trade in Jieyang that emerged after an unusual number of people - including many elderly, mentally disabled and itinerants - disappeared without trace.
Police arrested seven suspected corpse sellers in August last year, and four of them, including the ringleader, were sentenced to death in March this year, the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily reported. The three others received jail sentences ranging from eight years to life.
But the proceedings were hardly transparent: no reporters were allowed to attend the hearings, and the court refused to reveal whether the seven had appealed against their sentences.
What’s more, many residents said they had seen no improvement in public security one year after the arrests. The son of Li Yanmei, a 62-year-old mentally retarded woman suspected of having been murdered by corpse thieves in 2007, said they still feared going out at night even though there had been no further reports of missing people.
“Police haven’t contacted me about identifying remains, but I think the hopes of finding my mother alive are slim,” said the son, a farmer who declined to be named. “Everyone in the village is more cautious now, and nobody dares to go out at night.”
Although corpse substitution in Jieyang has stopped because of the convictions, residents said they still regarded burial as the most respectful way of handling the dead. As a result, a third option has emerged, as state media reported that some people in rural communities in Guangdong had placed their relatives’ ashes in coffins for secret burials.
Critics of the burial reform policy point with bitterness to the irony that most Communist Party officials who advocated it actually received burials themselves, some even having luxurious graves built for themselves while still alive.
The body of Mao Zedong - who signed the written proposal with 151 other party senior cadres in 1956 to promote cremation - was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on public display in Tiananmen Square. The bodies of other senior party cadres are still buried in Beijing’s Babaoshan (literally, eight-treasures mountain) Cemetery for Revolutionaries.
In April, Xinhua reported that Zhu Zhenfeng, party secretary of a village in Xiancheng town under the jurisdiction of Shantou, Guangdong, was sacked when local media reported he had built a 1.6 hectare grave for himself. Four land resources officials who approved the construction were also placed under a graft probe.
Similar cases have been reported in Chongqing and Hainan, where a deputy to the National People’s Congress and a former agricultural bureau chief were punished for building extravagant graves.
Professor Hu Xingdou, a commentator at Beijing University of Technology, said the burial reform policy contradicted the traditional ideology that burial brings peace to the deceased.
“It has been a widespread tradition in China for several thousand years ... and it’s common for hypocritical officials and the rich to enjoy privileges by constructing their own extravagant graves,” Hu said, adding that it was difficult to change such a deep-rooted tradition by simply issuing a government edict.
One other aspect of mandated cremation that has come under fire is the cost. Internet users have complained that although a wooden urn costs less than 50 yuan, they are priced at 400 to 500 yuan at many crematoriums, and most families end up having to spend more than 2,000 yuan - almost the average annual income of a farmer - for a funeral.
The numbers are especially upsetting in the light of an online poll that showed crematoriums to be one of the 10 most profitable industries.
A report by Xinhua quoted insiders from the funeral industry as saying that profits generated from funeral utilities were usually three to 20 times the production cost.
Even in a society so focused on economic growth, opponents of burial reform say that profiting from death is as offensive as the disregard the policy shows for tradition.
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How burying a tradition fuelled black market in corpse-selling
Fiona Tam
24 October 2009
It’s a simple truth: people who don’t agree with a law find ways to get around it. It’s true in life, and now it’s true even in death.
Chinese tradition holds that interred loved ones provide blessings and protection to the living, so burial is still the preferred method of disposal of bodies. But burying nine million people a year takes up precious farmland, so the Communist Party has discouraged the practice since 1956. At least 10 municipalities and provinces - including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong - went even further and banned it altogether.
Cremation is the government’s preferred method of disposing of remains, but in 2007 only 4.4 million corpses - 48.2 per cent of the dead - were sent to the country’s 1,635 crematoriums, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. That was far below the authorities’ expectations.
Although Dou Yupei, deputy civil affairs minister, praised Guangdong for achieving a 100 per cent cremation rate, the province’s crematoriums were found to have used corpses stolen from tombs or bought from corpse-selling gangs to reach that score.
The result of denying people a choice has been the emergence of a black market in human bodies in the province. Some people are willing to pay up to 10,000 yuan (HK$11,400) for a stranger’s corpse to give to the crematorium while they sneak out to bury their loved one. State media have reported that many gangs steal corpses from graves or even resort to murder to meet demand.
In an investigative report entitled “Deadly harvest” in November, the South China Morning Post told of an illegal corpse trade in Jieyang that emerged after an unusual number of people - including many elderly, mentally disabled and itinerants - disappeared without trace.
Police arrested seven suspected corpse sellers in August last year, and four of them, including the ringleader, were sentenced to death in March this year, the Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily reported. The three others received jail sentences ranging from eight years to life.
But the proceedings were hardly transparent: no reporters were allowed to attend the hearings, and the court refused to reveal whether the seven had appealed against their sentences.
What’s more, many residents said they had seen no improvement in public security one year after the arrests. The son of Li Yanmei, a 62-year-old mentally retarded woman suspected of having been murdered by corpse thieves in 2007, said they still feared going out at night even though there had been no further reports of missing people.
“Police haven’t contacted me about identifying remains, but I think the hopes of finding my mother alive are slim,” said the son, a farmer who declined to be named. “Everyone in the village is more cautious now, and nobody dares to go out at night.”
Although corpse substitution in Jieyang has stopped because of the convictions, residents said they still regarded burial as the most respectful way of handling the dead. As a result, a third option has emerged, as state media reported that some people in rural communities in Guangdong had placed their relatives’ ashes in coffins for secret burials.
Critics of the burial reform policy point with bitterness to the irony that most Communist Party officials who advocated it actually received burials themselves, some even having luxurious graves built for themselves while still alive.
The body of Mao Zedong - who signed the written proposal with 151 other party senior cadres in 1956 to promote cremation - was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on public display in Tiananmen Square. The bodies of other senior party cadres are still buried in Beijing’s Babaoshan (literally, eight-treasures mountain) Cemetery for Revolutionaries.
In April, Xinhua reported that Zhu Zhenfeng, party secretary of a village in Xiancheng town under the jurisdiction of Shantou, Guangdong, was sacked when local media reported he had built a 1.6 hectare grave for himself. Four land resources officials who approved the construction were also placed under a graft probe.
Similar cases have been reported in Chongqing and Hainan, where a deputy to the National People’s Congress and a former agricultural bureau chief were punished for building extravagant graves.
Professor Hu Xingdou, a commentator at Beijing University of Technology, said the burial reform policy contradicted the traditional ideology that burial brings peace to the deceased.
“It has been a widespread tradition in China for several thousand years ... and it’s common for hypocritical officials and the rich to enjoy privileges by constructing their own extravagant graves,” Hu said, adding that it was difficult to change such a deep-rooted tradition by simply issuing a government edict.
One other aspect of mandated cremation that has come under fire is the cost. Internet users have complained that although a wooden urn costs less than 50 yuan, they are priced at 400 to 500 yuan at many crematoriums, and most families end up having to spend more than 2,000 yuan - almost the average annual income of a farmer - for a funeral.
The numbers are especially upsetting in the light of an online poll that showed crematoriums to be one of the 10 most profitable industries.
A report by Xinhua quoted insiders from the funeral industry as saying that profits generated from funeral utilities were usually three to 20 times the production cost.
Even in a society so focused on economic growth, opponents of burial reform say that profiting from death is as offensive as the disregard the policy shows for tradition.
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