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.
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