News24

CHINA: 11 drug traffickers executed

Chinese authorities have executed 11 people convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced dozens of others to death ahead of International Anti-Drugs Day, state media reported on Friday.

Officials in Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, also set fire to 493kg of illegal drugs worth 150m, news reports said.

4 men were executed on Friday in Guangzhou, the capital of southern Guangdong province, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Another 4 were put to death in the southwestern province of Yunnan, it said, and 3 others in Wuhan, a city in central Hubei province. 

Their crimes included the smuggling and selling of heroin, ephedrine and opium.

Xinhua said that courts in many provinces sentenced dozens of people convicted of drug-related crimes to death.

The international human rights group Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty, urged China to halt its executions ahead of International Anti-Drugs Day on Saturday.

"China will execute dozens and perhaps hundreds of people this week," Amnesty International said. "Yet no convincing evidence has ever been produced that the death penalty deters would-be traffickers and users more effectively than any other punishment."

Last year, more than 50 people were executed in the week leading up to Anti-Drugs Day in just eight Chinese provinces, the London-based group said.

The state-run newspaper Beijing Evening News reported that a court in Wenzhou, a city on the southeast coast, sentenced to death four people convicted of involvement in a heroin trafficking ring in Yunnan.

A court in Shenzhen sentenced at least two convicted drug traffickers to death, including a "big Hong Kong drug lord" identified as Li Qingyuan, the newspaper said.

Yunnan borders the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle," which includes parts of Myanmar, Laos and northern Thailand and is the starting point for much of the illicit drug trade in the country.

Problems with drug addiction have soared in recent years and China regularly announces large seizures of heroin, opium and other illicit narcotics.

Chinese police solved 546 900 drug-related criminal cases from 1998-2003, seizing a total of 51 tons of heroin, Xinhua reported.