Corpse scavengers scour Chinese rivers on a regular basis, searching for dead bodies to extort money out of grieving families eager to bury or cremate their deceased loved ones, reports Sixth Tone.
Torrential rains fell across China this summer, killing over 150 people and displacing thousands, especially in rural areas with underdeveloped warning systems. Many other people are still missing and presumed dead.
China Business News reported Friday that corpse scavengers are turning this tragedy into profit. According to the report, scavengers found the body of woman who disappeared in a recent rain storm, and contacted the family after they posted her information and pictures online. They demanded $15,000 after finding the body over 100 miles from her hometown. The family is too poor to pay the recovery fee, so they haven’t reclaimed the body.
Corpse scavengers have operated in China for years. In 2009, three college students gave their lives attempting to save two children. China Business News said that when the corpse scavengers appeared, the deceased students’ classmates begged them to retrieve the bodies, but they refused to lift a finger until they were paid $5,500.
Not only are Chinese rivers filled with the bodies of flood victims, but it is not uncommon to run across swimmers who drowned in a river, landslide victims, and people who committed suicide by jumping off bridges.
Dealing with the dead is considered unlucky in China, yet corpse scavengers aren’t worried. People in China believe if a body is not properly buried or cremated, the person’s soul will reappear as a ghost or demon and haunt the family. Corpse scavengers then play on these fears and can demand extravagant sums of money.
Sohu News reported in May that a corpse scavenger named Chen Song recovered more than 200 bodies last year. He even found 70 bodies in a week.
Sixth Tone said that Fu Jian, a lawyer in Henan, considers this practice highly unethical.
“It’s alright to pay a reasonable amount of money to the people who salvage bodies, but excessive prices are not acceptable,” Fu said. Refusing to turn over a body until a family pays is classic extortion, and is a crime. Fu suggested that China’s civil affairs departments should take over corpse salvaging and offer these services as standard social services for the good of society. Currently, no such social services exist in China, so corpse scavengers are still common sights.
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