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SINGAPORE, April 20, 2002: L. F. Yong starts digging bodies just after dawn. On an average day, Yong and his team of 20 workers will have cracked open 40 graves and emptied them of their bones by noon. Yong is responsible for the hands-on work behind a government project to clear the Bidadari Cemetery, one of the largest Christian burial plots in Southeast Asia. The project will convert the tranquil resting ground for 58,000 dead into 12,000 centrally located, high-rise apartments for the living. The project is fueled by crowded Singapore’s hunger for land. The tiny Southeast Asian island, nestled between Malaysia and Indonesia, covers 650 km and has 4 million residents. Another 68,000 bodies will be exhumed from a neighboring Muslim section and reburied elsewhere. All unclaimed Christian bodies will be cremated by the government and, unless the ashes are claimed within a year, they will be scattered at sea. Since March, 2001, Singapore has published numerous notices about the exhumation in newspapers here and in Australia, England and Malaysia, but only 9,449 bodies have been claimed. The remaining 48,551 bodies will be cremated.

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