Chinese 'Committing Suicide Due To Coffin Bans'

Six elderly people in China are reported to have killed themselves ahead of new rules banning burials in coffins.

China has a tradition, which dates back thousands of years, of ancestor worship, usually requiring families to bury their relatives and construct a tomb.

Now, local governments are urging people to be cremated after death to save what they see as limited land resources.

In one city, Anqing in the eastern province of Anhui, all locals who die after June 1 must be cremated according to government regulations, the Beijing News Daily reported.

It was there that the six people committed suicide "to avoid the new regulations on funerals", the newspaper said, quoting family members.

The newspaper added the reasons for the suicides were "complex", despite the family claims.

One person said they wanted a coffin to keep them dry while they slept

Officials began confiscating coffins from locals in May.

One 91-year-old woman named Wu Zhengde killed herself on May 5 after learning of the change, it was reported, while another woman, Zheng Shifang, 83, committed suicide after officials sawed her coffin in two in front of her.

A local government department denied the suicides were connected to the burial ban, saying people had given up their coffins voluntarily.

"China is big, death and sickness amongst the elderly is normal," the report quoted a local official as saying.

Anqing locals, who can spend up to a decade preparing their coffins, were only informed of the upcoming burial ban in April.

The paper quoted a local surnamed Shi as saying: "I've had a hard life, and when I'm dead I'd like to sleep somewhere protected from the rain - inside a coffin."

The paper also quoted a Beijing-based lawyer as saying the seizures were illegal because coffins were the property of their owners.

Elsewhere in China, local officials have launched wide-reaching campaigns to "flatten graves" to create land for farming and development.

Officials in the central province of Henan demolished 400,000 graves in 2012, local media reported. The case provoked a nationwide outcry.

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