再Grave concerns, April 6th 2013 P32 (シンガポール、華人中心社会の維持)
In Singapore, a small, crowded island where the population has more than doubled in a generation, the dead have long had to make way for the living and unborn. In the 1960s, as a graveyard was cleared, a government minister dismissed objections with the question：゛Do you want me to look after our dead grandparents, or do you want to look after your grandchildren?゛These days, however, resistance to the planned building of an eight-lane expressway through another cemetery, at Bukit Brown, is less easily swept aside. Not only is this a special cemetery - the biggest Chinese graveyard outside China, and Singapore's first municipal pan-Chinese one (as opposed to those for different clans or dialect groups). Singaporeans are also less docile than they were. Bukit Brown, which closed to new applicants in 1973, has become embroiled in their search for a sense of national identity；and hence in a debate about what sort of country Singapore wants to be. Bukit Brown, 230 hectares of lush greenery in the heart of Singapore, is for much of the year a peaceful haunt. But at Qing Ming, the annual grave-sweeping festival that culminated this year on April 4th, it bursts into life, crowded with filial clusters visiting their ancestors' graves. They clean them, burn joss and candles, leave offerings of fruit, cakes, tea and other goodies and make bonfires of ghost-money and gifts for the afterworld. One lucky grandmother this year got a handbag, a pair of shoes and a frock. One elderly man keeps the voracious undergrowth away from his great-grandfather's grave because ゛I promised my granny,゛but when he is gone his own daughter may not come；he does not want to burden her with the responsibility. By the next grave-cleaning festival, Bukit Brown may have been transformed beyond recognition, as work starts on the road. Of more than 200,000 graves now estimated to be in Bukit Brown and adjacent graveyards, only 3,746 will have to be exhumed. And in an unusual concession to the nature-lovers who have argued Bukit Brown is an invaluable haven for birds and animals, it is to be built as a flyover, so as not to impede their movement. But no one can doubt that once construction begins the character of the place will change for ever. The government is showing consideration for the people directly affected as well as for fauna. Descendants of those in the graves that lie in the way of the road have until April 15th to register for exhumation, and until May 31st to arrange a private disinterment. After the deadline, the government will, at the taxpayer's expense, arrange exhumations and cremations, and store the ashes for three years in a columbarium. Remains still unclaimed will then be dispersed at sea. No more than about a third of the graves to be disturbed have been registered so far. For the dead, passive resistance is the only option.
