Coffins seized and destroyed in zero-burials drive in China

OFFICIALS in south-east China have begun smashing up thousands of coffins, some of which were exhumed, as it intensified a campaign banning people from burying their dead.

The zero-burial policy in Jiangxi province, where many people buy their own coffins while still alive and well, was introduced six months ago to stop land being used for burials.

In the past week the heavy-handed enforcement of the policy by the local government has caused outrage across China – even state media criticised the action as “barbaric”.

Videos and images showed officials taking coffins from villagers’ homes, piling them up, then destroying them. They were also filmed forcibly removing protesters lying inside their own coffins to protect them.

A 29-year-old man in Jian village, who refused to be named due to fear of repercussions, told state media that his grandparents had their coffins taken. “These coffins had been stored in ancestral halls and had been with my grandparents for more than 30 years, as they were made by carpenters using wood grown from our own land,” he said.

Jiangxi aims to be “cremation only” by September in a drive to be more ecofriendly and to preserve land in a province that has a population of nearly 45million. There have been previous cases of such measures in Jiangxi. In April officials in the province’s Yiyang county, 460 miles north-east of Hong Kong, exhumed a newly-buried corpse and its coffin without the family’s permission, and had the body cremated.

Following the backlash, the Jiangxi local government has said that its implementation of the policy would become more respectful.