



Someone overnight this week dug holes in and around graves likely belonging to Chinese miners in British Columbia, reports CBC News.



The Granite Creek Preservation Society fears the holes are the work of grave robbers going through the cemetery with metal detectors.



If true, this would not be the first time grave robbers have desecrated the Granite Creek cemetery. Bob Sterne of the Preservation Society saw something similar five years ago.



“I went over and said, ‘you know, you realize this is a cemetery,’ ” Sterne said. “And they said, ‘well, but this is only the Chinese section.’ That was their response.”



Grave robbing would be a violation of the B.C. Heritage Conservation Act which was passed to protect historical burial sites.



Granite Creek was once a town of 2,000 people, one-third who were Chinese miners. The town was destroyed by fire in 1907 and closed in 1918. Most of the Chinese were buried in a segregated area of the cemetery outside the main section. Most of the Chinese buried there were exhumed and returned to China.



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