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A British citizen native to Taiwan was arrested in Bangkok Thursday after Thai police discovered in his belongings bodies of six tiny children, apparently all young enough to be victims of abortion, roasted and covered in gold leaf.

The UK’s Independent newspaper reports that the children, aged between two and seven months’ gestation, were roasted “as part of a black magic ritual.” No word on whether any of the “foetuses” were still alive when the ritual began.

Chow Hok Kuen, 28, faces a 2,000 baht fine ($64 U.S.) and a year in prison for possessing the bodies.

“He said he planned to sell the fetuses to clients who believe they will make them lucky and rich,” said Bangkok policeman Colonel Wiwat Kamchamnan.

Nine MSM states, “In Thai black magic rituals, also observed among some Chinese communities, preserved fetuses are believed to bring good fortune to the owner and are often kept in shrines within homes or businesses.”

The bodies cost an average of about $1,000 each, an amount Chow Hok Kuen hoped to increase sixfold upon resale.

There are a lot of things to say about this, but one terrible symbol seems to persist.

Like their millions of aborted brothers and sisters, these six little ones have been disallowed from laughing, falling in love, or smiling. Instead their faces were stilled, hardened by fire, then caked in metal – forming with their bodies a grotesque, modern “golden idol” to the endless perversions, qualifications, commercializations, redefinitions, and marginalizations wrought against the child.

There is no telling the blackness to which our redefinitions of truly beautiful things – children, life, sexuality – can descend. And while such redefinition can render something ugly, it can never harm the thing itself. One hopes these bodies so mutilated by evil are placed in loving hands, burying them with all due mourning for their true and untouchable beauty. May they rest in peace.