Grave robbing

Yesterday at Sre Liev village in Kampot province, villagers held a Buddhist ceremony

to repay gratitude for the jewelry they collected from a recent digging of a Khmer Rouge-era grave site, where their deceased compatriots have been buried. (Source)

Last week hundreds of villagers began to dig up and loot the graves of Khmer Rouge victims after some one had noticed a pair of earrings in the ground. A one hectare grave site was completely over turned. Having robbed everything possible from the graves, the villagers performed a ceremony to appease the spirits of the dead. Some pictures here.

Is is acceptable to desecrate graves due to poverty? No news source that covered the story has made a moral judgement one way or t'other. I dislike looting of this nature. Those people died a horrible and terrifying death. They are the same as the villagers except they didn't survive. Robbing their graves is wrong. On the other hand, the Khmer Rouge victims are dead and all their worldly possessions cannot benefit them now. Should they be used to alleviate the terrible poverty in rural Cambodia, although this would merely be a stopgap measure. Throwing money at a problem doesn't work.

One could argue either side but I say let the victims of the Khmer Rouge rest in peace.