South Korean customs officials recently seized thousands of pills filled with powdered human baby flesh arriving from China. Since August 2011, South Korean officials have intercepted more than 17000 pills smuggled from China.

South Korean officials became aware of a horrific practice of eating aborted fetuses after Seoul Broadcasting System showed a documentary on Chinese doctors who performed abortions and then ate the fetuses. One Chinese doctor on the documentary took out fetuses from his refrigerator   

Earlier this week, the Daily Mail revealed further details about the practice:

“The grim trade is being run from China where corrupt medical staff are said to be tipping off medical companies when babies are aborted or delivered still-born.

“The tiny corpses are then bought, stored in household refrigerators in homes of those involved in the trade before they are removed and taken to clinics where they are placed in medical drying microwaves.

“Once the skin is tinder dry, it is pummeled into powder and then processed into capsules along with herbs to disguise the true ingredients from health investigators and customs officers.”

Chinese authorities denied allegations that the pills were manufactured in China. A Ministry of Health spokesman stated that an investigation conducted last August showed no proof that pills containing human flesh were manufactured in China.

Reports show that the South Korean customs officials aren’t the first ones to witness such a gruesome human rights violation by the Chinese. In 2007, Hong Kong based Next Magazine reported that infant fetuses had became a popular health and beauty supplement in China. In Guangdong, the demand for fetus’s body parts was so high that buyers purchased them directly at the hospitals.

One writer says that in China, reports about meals made from infant flesh surface from time to time. An online video clips on Chinese cannibalism contains the introduction that “eating human flesh is an art form.”

In 1995, one human rights advocate recorded allegation of doctors eating dead fetus after performing abortions at Shenzhen hospitals. To confirm the allegation, an undercover reporter from Eastern Express visited a state owned health center for women and children and asked a female doctor for a fetus. The doctor said that the hospital was out of stock but reminded the reporter to come back. When the reporter went back to the hospital, the doctor offered ten fetuses for free.

In another state-run hospital in Shenzhen, a nurse said that fetuses were in short supply and the price could go up from $10 to $20. In another clinic, one doctor offered the reporter a full-term fetus and recommended that it had the best healing ingredients.

The disturbing human rights abuse comes from a distorted view of unborn children in Chinese culture. Traditionally, ancient Chinese considered ingestion of firstborns, aborted fetuses and placentas as part of a mother’s flesh. An unborn child has no personhood of his or her own. Hence, mothers believed that they were theirs to reabsorb to create a new, healthier baby. This type of belief is common in societies practicing cannibalistic infanticide.

Chinese folk tradition says that placenta consumption helps increase the supply of sperm, and in traditional Chinese medicine it is believed to support blood supply.

Consumption of fetuses and full-term infants is a horrific, vile practice against humanity. The Chinese government must step up efforts to end the practice 

Youngbee Dale is a writer, researcher, and human rights advocate. She invites you to join her