Greeks paying grave rent, forced to dig up relatives.

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The economic situation, religious sensitives and lack of available space are coming to ahead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32165261
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34920068

Although cremation has become legal fairly recently. It is not something that is available yet. The eastern orthodox church opposes it.

Greeks have to pay rent on plot, becuase getting a permanent plot is too expensive for some.

They argue that the body is awaiting resurrection at the second coming. However they have no problem having ossuaries where bones are stashed in boxes. Of course bones often break up.

For some reason the idea of resurrection doesn't seem far fetched to them, yet the idea of being resurrected from ashes. Yet most people who are buries the majority of their organic material breaks down.

Ray Bradbury had a short story in the Seventies about a corrupt Mexican village where they dug up your dead relatives if you didnt poney up money every few years to pay the rent on the plot. Never finished reading the story (I guess it was too macabre for my taste then), so I dont know how it ended. But it seemed like either pure fiction, or like something that would only happen in a remote Mexican village.

But now the whole nation of Greece is forced to do that very thing in real life!

It is actually not that new, just that numbers are higher. The economic have changed, but the space and the religious aspect are constant.

I have been to Greece myself several times so not quite understanding the space issue. There is enough space. I suspect it is more a bureaucratic issue. People could bury their dead on private property.

If it's not this, you're lucky if the cemetery isn't double stacking coffins in the grave.