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Chinese police have arrested seven suspected members of a gang that appears to have specialized in providing dead bodies for wealthy families in China's southern Guangdong Province. According to local police over 100 primarily elderly and handicapped people have been abducted, murdered and given the identities of deceased well-off Chinese, allowing wealthy families to give their dead relatives a secret traditional burial instead of the cremation emphasized by modern Chinese law.
Actual burials have traditionally been regarded as the most respectful way of laying loved ones to rest in China, but this tradition has been under heavy pressure since the Communist takeover in 1949. Apparently a clandestine market has sprung up in which rich Chinese have been willing to pay up to 10,000 RMB (around 7,500 DKK) for the "procurement" of the body of some unfortunate person, usually kidnapped in a remote part of the country, either strangled or poisoned and then cremated under a false identity.
Local police clued in on the gang of "bodysnatchers" during a routine murder investigation in the town of Puning in Guangdong Province. As mentioned above seven people have so far been arrested but investigations are far from concluded, according to local authorities.
Full story in Danish
News category: China
Published on this site: Sep. 3, 2008
Source:dr.dk/nyheder
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