No room for the dead in Singapore
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SINGAPORE — The days are numbered for Bukit Brown Cemetery, one of Singapore’s oldest burial grounds, but concerned citizens are campaigning for history to win over high-rises.
Graves in the thickly forested cemetery are set to be exhumed to make way for more apartment towers in one of the world’s most densely populated countries, which has 7,126 persons per square kilometer (0.4 square mile).
The fate of the graveyard, where several of the island’s early ethnic Chinese businessmen are buried, has sparked an emotional call for the preservation of the hilly expanse located in a prime bungalow district.
“Bukit Brown possibly contains Singapore’s oldest Chinese grave, and that says a lot,” Irving Johnson, an assistant professor of Southeast Asian studies at the National University of Singapore, told AFP..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110907com5.html
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