Strange

Mourners Use Murder Victims to Skirt the Law

by Barbara McPherson | June 7, 2009 at 03:16 pm

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Tradition in China demands that the dead are given a suitable burial and continue to be treated with respect. The central government supports the cremation of the dead to save space. The land that may be given over to an elaborate grave site could also be used for housing or agriculture.
With an increasing middle class in China and a return to more traditional ways, the two aims clash and in some areas cremation is mandatory. There has sprung up a new crime feeding on the wishes of the bereaved to bury their beloved.

But leave it to a bunch of thugs in Guangdong province, both organized groups and individuals, to come up with an entrepreneurial solution to this problem. For the last few years, criminals have been murdering the old and the disabled and selling their bodies to the families of the recently bereaved.

And how would that help those families? It allows them to send the murdered bodies for cremation, claiming they are their own deceased. This leaves them free to bury their real loved ones in secret, in a more traditional manner.

Apparently the going price for a body is about $1 500. There seems to be quite a market for this macabre product in the wealthy urban areas.

Suspicion first arose when the number of missing-person posters began to climb in the Jiexing and Puning areas. Authorities estimate that as many as 400 people have been killed to date. Many arrests have been made, dating back to 1998. Whether those have included buyers of the bodies as well as sellers is not clear.

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Paschen

at 21:25 on June 7th, 2009

Cremation has been the traditional way of burial in most of China and Eastern Asia overall especially on the Buddhist areas.

Japan has only cremation and it is mandatory as well.

However even in some areas of Germany cremation has been mandatory for some time now. Space is a factor and will prevail as well as climate and health that need to be considered.

I am sure where this is coming from and I can not see this working since cremation is with in Chinese traditions.

The Telegraph that originally posted this article has pulled it since.