NOT A VIKING FUNERAL

"Two mortuary workers in east China have been arrested and fired after the bodies of 21 infant babies and fetuses were found dumped in a river. Two senior staff at Jining Medical University in Shandong province have also been fired over the incident on the outskirts of the city late last month. At least eight of the bodies had tags indicating they came from the hospital. One of the 21 bodies, which have all since been cremated, was found in a plastic bag marked ‘hospital waste’. It is thought the corpses may have been those of aborted fetuses or babies who had died of illness. A spokesperson for the city government said that the two mortuary workers, named as Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun, had been paid to dispose of the bodies by relatives of the dead. “Investigations by police and health authorities show that Zhu and Wang had reached verbal agreements privately with relatives of the dead babies to dispose the bodies and charged fees,” the spokesman, Gong Zhenhua, said. “They subsequently transported the bodies secretly to the Guangfu River, but they had failed to bury the bodies completely.” At least 13 million abortions are thought to be carried out in China each year. The practice is common partly because of to the nation’s so-called “one-child policy”, which limits most urban couples to a single child. The rules are widely blamed for fueling abortions of female fetuses because boys are traditionally favored. Allegations of poor treatment of patients in the country’s underfunded hospitals are also common. Last June, a hospital in central Hubei province was found to have dumped the bodies of two adults and six aborted fetuses at a construction site after failing to locate relatives of the dead. A bag containing severed human limbs was also found in the case in the city of Xiangfan."