A lawyer who blew the whistle on a grisly nationwide trade in stolen and dismembered corpses has been removed from his position as director of a Beijing law firm, RFA has learned.

Yi Shenghua, who until Wednesday morning local time was listed as a director of the Beijing Yongzhe Law Firm, sparked a social media storm after he revealed the grisly details of a body-snatching scheme in which dead bodies and body parts were sold off to biotech institutions to be harvested for dental bone grafts without relatives’ knowledge or consent.

Investigators from the Ministry of Public Security are investigating reports that Shanxi Aurui Biomaterials had been involved in trading thousands of dead bodies or body parts, on suspicion that the company engaged in “theft of, insult to, or intentional destruction of human remains,” according to multiple news reports that followed up on Yi’s posts.

Yi had alleged that bodies were being sent to the company from funeral homes across Shanxi, Sichuan and Guangxi provinces, with thousands of bodies in Sichuan alone, and more than 70 families seeking redress.

Their bones were being used to create dental bone implants, and relatives couldn’t be sure the ashes they were receiving were indeed the complete remains of their loved ones, he wrote, quoting a fellow lawyer.

Later, after being warned off going public by officials from the Beijing Municipal Judicial Affairs, he posted: “I am willing to pay the price to expose this enraging truth.”

In an Aug. 13 official announcement, the Bureau said Yi would step down from his position as director of Beijing Yongzhe, which he founded. The firm didn’t immediately update its website, however, and Yi was still listed as a director on Wednesday morning.

An employee who answered the phone at Beijing Yongzhe on Wednesday appeared to confirm the move when contacted by RFA Mandarin.

“Li Yinghong is now the director recognized by the Judicial Affairs Bureau,” the employee said, before handing the phone to a colleague.

Asked why Yi’s name was still listed on the firm’s website, the second colleague said: “The Bureau of Judicial Affairs’ version will definitely be more accurate than ours.”

Soon afterward, Yi’s listing as director was removed from the firm’s website, and Li Yinghong’s name appeared in its place.

‘Anyone who dares to expose’

A Beijing-based lawyer who gave only the pseudonym Wang for fear of reprisals said Yi’s ouster was definitely linked to his whistle-blowing over the body-snatching case.

“The Beijing Municipal Judicial Affairs Bureau has a deputy director of the lawyers’ work guidance department called Zhu Yuzhu who has been behind the punishment of many lawyers and law firms in the past,” Wang said. “He was the architect of the July 9, 2015, political crackdown [on rights lawyers].”

“Now, it’s Yi Shenghua’s turn,” he said. “Yi’s exposure of the theft and sale of human bones was a meaningful act for society, but ... he is being punished by the Beijing Municipal Judicial Affairs Bureau.”

Another lawyer who gave only the pseudonym Tan for fear of reprisals said Yi’s sacking highlights how little freedom of speech there is in China.

“It’s not just Yi Shenghua; journalists who exposed the gutter oil scandal were also persecuted back then,” Tan said. “Anyone who dares to expose the dark side [of Chinese society] will be attacked and retaliated against.”

Chinese censors have moved in tandem with the sacking of Yi Shenghua to minimize public discussion of the scandal.

All of Yi’s Weibo posts about the body-snatching case have since been removed from the social media platform Weibo, along with much of the content and comment on the case.

According to an in-depth follow-up from official media outlet The Paper that has since been deleted, the Taiyuan Public Security Bureau in the northern province of Shanxi sent the results of an investigation into the illegal sale of corpses to the state prosecutor for review and prosecution in May.

Shanxi Aorui stands accused of “illegally purchasing human remains and body parts from Sichuan, Guangxi, Shandong and other places for processing into bone grafts worth 380 million yuan (US$53 million) between January 2015 and July 2023,” The Paper said.

It said police had seized “more than 18 tonnes of human bones” and more than 34,000 articles of finished product from the company, and that one suspect identified only by his surname Su had arranged for more than 4,000 human remains to be stolen from four funeral homes in Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou and Sichuan between 2017 and 2019.