- June 26 -

China Executes 43 for Drug Crimes

BEIJING - China executed at least 56 people for drug crimes and staged mass rallies nationwide Tuesday to mark a U.N. anti-drug day. Thousands of people attended a rally at a stadium in Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, where 20 alleged drug traffickers were sentenced to death, said a city police official. Using remote-control detonators, government officials ignited 2 tons of confiscated heroin placed in large metal pans and doused with gasoline. State television carried the spectacle live on its noon news broadcast. The executions were carried out immediately afterward at a separate location, the Kunming police official said. Separately on Tuesday, eight people in the central city of Wuhan and five people on the southern island of Hainan were executed for drug trafficking. Yunnan police also executed Li Shaoju, a citizen of Myanmar, on Monday for smuggling more than 300 pounds of heroin, opium, and morphine from Myanmar to China, newspapers reported. In coastal Fujian province, five Taiwanese citizens were executed on Monday for attempting to smuggle crystal methamphetamine - also known as ``ice'' - across the strait to Taiwan. Eighteen heroin traffickers were also executed Monday in Chongqing in southwestern China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. China has detained 15,000 suspected drug dealers and seized 2.2 tons of heroin, 1.2 tons of opium, and 2 tons of ``ice,'' in the first five months of the year, state media reported. In particular, ``ice'' and Ecstacy are being produced in larger amounts, Jia Chunwang, the Minister of Public Security said in comments published in the English-language China Daily. The number of registered drug addicts in China has risen from 681,000 in 1999 to 860,000 in 2000, according to the Ministry of Public Security. Police have carried out hundreds of executions since April under a renewed crime crackdown that allows speeded up trials and broader use of the death penalty. Executions are usually carried out by a gunshot to the back of the head.