China executed tens of drug traffickers in a synchronised...

China executed tens of drug traffickers in a synchronised operation to dramatise its seriousness about fighting drug-related crime and to mark the International Anti-Drug Day. Some analysts said the real figure was 10 executions per province, which would put the total at more than 300. During the International Day for Narcotics Control the China's State Council released an official white paper devoted to the country's measures to combat the manufacture and use of narcotics and stimulants. "Criminals who smuggle, sell, transport or manufacture large amounts of drugs shall be sentenced to death", the document said. The State Council appealed to the Chinese people to rekindle the spirit of the 1950s when, after the communist revolution, the use of opium was said to have been wiped out in three years. To mark this day, the Supreme People's Court of China announced that ten drug-related criminals were executed and another fifteen were sentenced to life or fixed-term imprisonment in three separate cases. The first case involved Chen Xinyuan, from Taiwan, Tsai Dehui, a Hong Kong businessman and Gu Jianzhu, a farmer in the Fujian Province, who trafficked 115,000 grams of heroin from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan in 1992 and 1993. The three were all sentenced to death by local courts in 1998. They were executed in Quanzhou. The Guangdong Province Higher People's Court pronounced death sentences on four major principal drug criminals including Lin Weijun, Lin Junqiang, and Lu Hui They were executed for manufacturing the narcotic "ice" on a large scale in Huizhou. Yang Huicheng, involved in the same case, was executed for manufacturing drugs and illegal possession of firearms. Zhang Jinfu, Zhou Weijun and Yang Shaogui, all Yunnan peasants, were executed for smuggling some 76,000 grams of heroin. Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court sentenced Taiwanese Dai Wuji to death for smuggling 320 kg of the narcotic "ice" out of China by fishing boat. The Guangzhou City Intermediate People's Court held a public rally at the Anti-British Memorial Monument in the public square of Sanyuanli to pronounce death sentences on a number of drug criminals, including Xia Funian. "The courts will effectively curb drug-related crimes with severe legal measures to guarantee that the life and property rights of the public will not be violated," said Supreme People's Court Vice-President Liu Jiachen. In Chongqing, in southwestern China, 17 drug traffickers, including four dealers from one family, were executed. In another symbolic action, large quantities of confiscated heroin and the methamphetamine `ice' were burned at Humen in south China. This was where a national hero, Lin Zexu, burned thousands of boxes of opium belonging to foreign traders in 1839.