China executes 10 traffickers ahead of anti-drugs day (Roundup)

Beijing - Courts across China have executed at least 10 drug traffickers and sentenced to death dozens more, including one foreigner, ahead of Friday's UN-sponsored international anti-drugs day, state media reported on Thursday. Yan Chaomin, 59, was executed by firing squad early Thursday in the south-western province of Sichuan after she was convicted of trafficking heroin, a provincial government news website reported. Police in Sichuan's Dazhou city caught Yan with 200 grams of heroin hidden in her underwear and found another 12 grams at her lodgings in Dazhou, the report said. The court verdict said Yan's relapse into drug trafficking, despite serving two previous sentences for similar offences, 'shows that she is extremely vicious, capable of causing great harm, and should be severely punished according to law'. The Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court also ordered the execution on Wednesday of two convicted drug traffickers, a local newspaper reported. Shanghai courts held public sentencings this week of 84 people convicted of drug offences, including five people who were sentenced to death or given suspended death sentences. Another court in the north-eastern province of Liaoning on Thursday said it had executed two men last month after they were convicted of leading a gang which smuggled heroin from Myanmar. 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 Supreme People's Court approved the death sentences before all five executions in Dazhou, Shanghai and Liaoning, the reports said. At a press conference, the Supreme People's Court named Yan and five other drug traffickers who were all executed on Thursday morning after involvement in four 'major drug cases'. State media reports from the press conference gave no details of where the other five executions took place on Thursday. The Supreme People's Court said courts nationwide handled some 14,200 drug-related cases in the first five months of this year, up 12 per cent from the same period of 2008. Several other cities held public sentencing rallies or publicized drug-related cases this week. A court in the southern city of Dongguan, Guangdong province, on Tuesday sentenced to death a Nigerian man and his Chinese girlfriend after convicting them of trafficking about 11 kilograms of heroin. In Yunnan, the Kunming Railway district court in the provincial capital sentenced 24 drug traffickers earlier this week, including a couple whose death sentences were confirmed after appeal hearings. It was not known if the couple were executed. The eastern province of Jiangsu announced sentences for 25 people convicted of drug-related offences on Wednesday, including 17 who received severe sentences ranging between 15 years in prison and death, local media said. Five drug traffickers also received suspended death sentences on Wednesday in the south-western region of Guangxi. 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 combined. China claims to have 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.