Two Chinese officials bought corpses from graverobbers to meet government cremation quotas, local media outlets reported, as Beijing pushes to enforce its controversial and highly sensitive burial policies.
The officials from Guangdong Province bought the bodies from a man who stole more than 20 in nighttime raids on graveyards, Xinhua news agency said, citing Chinese media sources.
“Both were local officials in charge of funeral management reform,” Xinhua said, naming them He (何) and Dong (董).
“They told police that they bought the corpses to reach the government’s cremation quota,” it said, adding that Dong had paid 3,000 yuan (US$489) each for 10 bodies, while He’s cost half the price for an unspecified number.
China has a long history of ancestor worship and — in many areas — a traditional belief that an intact body is necessary for a peaceful afterlife, so that burials are preferred and families are eager to build tombs for their loved ones.
However, the government has launched a campaign encouraging cremation to save land for farming and development.
The bodysnatching scheme came to an end in June, when a man in Beiliu in the Guangxi Autonomous Region, next to Guangdong in southern China, reported that his grandfather’s body had been stolen, the Xinhua report late on Sunday said.
The family had been guarding the tomb in a bid to ward off potential graverobbers, but could not prevent the theft, Xinhua said.
Authorities had demanded a minimum number of cremations in the unspecified towns where Dong and He worked, but residents had begun burying dead relatives in secret to bypass the regulations.
“Pushed to meet their quota, the two officials sought to purchase the corpses and send them to funeral parlors for cremation,” Xinhua said.
China’s drive to see more deceased people cremated rather than buried has been widely opposed across the nation.
Six elderly people in the eastern Anhui Province were said by domestic media outlets in May to have committed suicide to ensure that they died before regulations banning burials came into force.
Elsewhere, government officials have launched massive campaigns to “flatten graves,” to create land for farming and development. About 400,000 graves were demolished in the central province of Henan in 2012, according to reports, provoking a nationwide outcry.
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