Beijing - A court in north-eastern China Thursday said it
had executed two men convicted of leading a gang which smuggled
heroin from Myanmar, state media reported.
Liu Fuying and Sun Yulong were convicted in China's Liaoning
province last August of trafficking more than 8 kilograms of heroin
on several trips from Myanmar since 2002, the official Xinhua news
agency quoted court officials as saying.
The two men were executed last month after the Supreme People's
Court approved the death sentences against them, the agency said.
It quoted court official Wu Yanjun as saying drug trafficking by
'more and more professional' gangs was increasing in north-eastern
China, including the smuggling of drugs from China to North and South
Korea.
Liaoning courts handled 1,054 drug-related cases involving 1,797
people over the past 12 months, up 60 per cent year-on-year, the
agency said.
The report of the two executions came one day before the
UN-sponsored international anti-drugs day on Friday, around which
many Chinese cities and provinces normally announce drug-related
sentences.
China keeps the number of executions a state secret, but the
US-based Dui Hua Foundation has estimated that at least 5,000 people
have been executed annually in recent years, more than in the rest of
the world put together.
China has limited the use of death sentences in recent years but
retains it for 68 offences, including drug trafficking, serious
corruption and other non-violent crimes.
Legal analysts put China's annual number of executions at more
than 10,000 annually before 1997, when it abolished capital
punishment for theft.
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