Six elderly people in China are said to have committed suicide to ensure they died before new regulations banning coffin burials come into force, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Chinese families are required to bury their relatives and construct a tomb in a tradition dating back thousands of years of ancestor worship, Agence France-Presse reported.
However, all locals' death after June 1 was ordered to be cremated by government officials in Anqing, a city in the eastern province of Anhui, the Beijing News daily reported.
"To avoid the new regulations on funerals," six elderly people in the area committed suicide, the newspaper quoted family members of the deceased as saying.
When coffins were forcibly confiscated by government officials in May, the locals "had a huge psychological impact" on them.
Despite family claims, the reasons for the suicides are much more "complex," the newspaper added.
According to AFP, "One 91-year-old woman named Wu Zhengde hanged herself on May 5 after learning of the new regulations."
"Another woman, Zheng Shifang, 83, killed herself after officials sawed her coffin in two in front of her. A 68-year-old woman killed herself by jumping into a well, while others drank poison."
However, the local government's propaganda department told media that the suicides were not connected to the burial ban, and 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.
Since the coffins were the property of their owners, the seizures were seen as illegal, the paper quoted Beijing-based lawyer Zheng Daoli as saying.
Locals in Anqing - who spend up to a decade preparing their coffins - were only informed of the burial ban in April, two months before the new regulations were due to come into force, the Beijing News said.
"I've had a hard life, and when I'm dead I'd like to sleep somewhere protected from the rain - inside a coffin," a local surnamed Shi said.
