You might think no one will mess with you in this city, but even when you’ve passed on you’re prone to disturbance. Sabrina Lee confronts Singapore’s grave issues of exhumation and space shortages

One people, one nation, one island. With ‘en bloc’ the new buzzword on our space-scarce island, we forget that our resident dead suffer the same fate. Tens of thousands of Christian, Malay Muslim, Buddhist and Taoist graves have been exhumed (ie the removal of corpses from the earth) to make room for condominiums, parks, roads, MRT railways and golf courses (and by our last count, we have 18 golf courses). Whether it’s a private or public cemetery, there is no guarantee your beloved deceased will rest in one piece.

Charles (left) and Raymond Goh of Asia Paranormal Investigators rest on the tombs of Shuang Long Shan Kahha Cemetery in Holland Close

After a law was passed in 1998 placing a 15-year tenure on graves in Singapore, exhumations have become commonplace. At least seven major cemeteries have been exhumed across the island, including one in Fort Canning, the Jewish cemetery at the junction of Thomson and Newton Road (now an MRT station) and Ulu Pandan Cemetery (exhumed for the Singapore urban development programme). Those that remain are stateowned: Choa Chu Kang Cemetery (the only one that currently accepts burials), Pusara Abadi Cemetery and the State Cemetery in Kranji reserved for dignitaries and those who have made a contribution to our city-state; at present, two ex-presidents – Inche Yusof bin Ishak and Dr Benjamin Henry Sheares – are buried there.

Tombstones from the 19th century are all that remains of Fort Canning Cemetery

So when the mandate comes, who do you call to dig a skeleton out of its coffin? Darren Tan, operations manager at Chua Chu Kang Monuments Contractor, located in Bukit Batok. A third-generation family business, Tan and his team of gravediggers are hired by families (for special services) or the city-state (for mass exhumations) to exhume an average of five to ten bodies a month. ‘It really depends on whether the dates are auspicious – even exhumers have off-peak periods,’ says Tan. ‘Especially during the seventh month of the lunar calendar, when it’s dead quiet here at the office.’ (Pun intended?) With more cemeteries being exhumed, one wonders whether any property in Singapore is sacred. ‘The Government has the right to claim the land should they see any commercial viability in it, and thus most grave sites have a tenure of 15 years,’ says Tan.

In special cases like the Shuang Long Shan Hakka Cemetery, located within an HDB compound off Holland Close, negotiations were made by the owners of the site for the tenure to surpass the 15-year mark. However, Raymond Goh of Asia Paranormal Investigators (API) estimates that by the year 2010, the memorial will be exhumed to make way for more housing. And with progress comes selective memories; estates like Tiong Bahru and Bishan, lifestyle amenities like the Botanic Gardens, Cathay Cineleisure, Ngee Ann City and Sentosa were all land for the dead back in the day.

The biggest tomb in Singapore belongs to Chinese tycoon Ong Sam Leong, who struck it rich by supplying workers for phosphate mining on Christmas Island

When a family whose deceased is buried in a plot of land that’s about to be redeveloped, they apply for an exhumation permit. The body gets exhumed on the day itself and then cremated. A total of ten exhumations – private or public, in the whole of Singapore – are permitted a day. Christian exhumations are fairly straightforward; Buddhist and Taoist exhumations require more time as the family members conduct rituals for a safe passage to the afterlife, such as washing the dug-up bones with white wine. To keep a straight head while digging up bodies, Tan maintains a certain matter-of-factness. ‘We start by hacking the tombstone, and then we start our descent…about five to seven feet into the ground,’ says Tan. ‘The lid of the coffin usually collapses under the weight of the soil; this makes it easier to lift the body [or whatever’s left of it] out. Once the extraction is done, we pour the soil back into the ground and plant a patch of cow grass over it.’ However, the relatives of the deceased may not have such a clinical view of the process. ‘My grandfather was exhumed from Bidadari Christian Cemetery,’ says TOS editor Charlene Fang. ‘While I was not there to witness the event, my mother rang me up afterwards and described how one of my aunts nearly fainted from the distress of it all.’

Ten years ago, there was no tenure on burial spots, but after a spate of residential construction in the late ’90s, land scarcity demanded that time limits be placed on graves. Now ‘80 per cent of the deceased are cremated, leaving the rest to be buried,’ says Tan. And in some cases, even the dead aren’t exempt from indignities. Tan recalls how a Thai family discovered a relative buried in Singapore three years after his actual death. They asked Tan to exhume the body immediately – two years too early, he laments. ‘Most bodies are exhumed five years after they’ve been buried. I can still remember the smell, it was like clogged sewage.’

Scattered throughout the island in marked and unmarked graves, dignitary and worker rest side by side, all facing an uncertain future. As Raymond’s brother Charles Goh, also of API, so empathically states, ‘Death [is] the great equaliser.’

by Sabrina Lee

Raymond:- There is a misquote here regarding the Shuang Long Shan Hakka cemetery. The run out date is not 2010, but should be sometime after 2065, after completion of a 99 year lease.