Six people were executed on Wednesday for their drug related crimes, the No 2 Intermediate People's Court of Beijing announced yesterday.
The intermediate court held a press conference to say that the executions were carried out on the order of the Supreme People's Court of China.
Zheng Fuxing was the only one among the six executed who was not a trafficker but a maker of drugs.
Zheng was the chief druggist of a pharmaceutical factory in Fujian Province, East China, and he used his expertise to produce narcotic pills in the factory.
The five drug traffickers were Li Shuying, Zhao Zhimin, Ali, Dong Yingdong and Ma Wenqiong. Three of them were women. Four more drug traffickers were sentenced to death with two-year probation.
The Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court also sentenced seven drug traffickers yesterday.
A Uygur woman from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was sentenced to death with probation. Two were sentenced to life imprisonment; three to 15 years in jail, and one to five years. Most of the convicts are from Xinjiang.
A total of 311 criminals involved in 263 drug-related cases were punished by Beijing-based courts from January to last month, according to sources.
At a press conference to recognize International Anti-Drug Day, Vice-President of the Beijing Higher People's Court Wang Ming warned the city needs to do more to fight drugs.
According to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security, there are 28,000 registered addicts in the capital.
Still, "a large quantity of drugs is reaching different segments of society," Wang said.
Moreover, crimes related to newer types of drugs, such as ecstasy and chloramine ketone, are emerging, said Wang.
In Shanghai, local police yesterday announced they had recently apprehended an Uzbek group suspected of drug trafficking, and had seized 3.15 kilograms of heroin.
The group of five, three men and two women, swallowed heroin pills wrapped in plastic bags. One man, whose name has not been identified, died of heroin poisoning after the bag broke inside his body.
"It is believed to be the first case in China where a Central Asian group has been involved in drug trafficking," said Fang Dinghua with the Shanghai Public Security Bureau.
Early in April, local police had obtained some leads about the group. By late May, police got word that the five went to Southwest China's Yunnan Province from Beijing, and then arrived in Shanghai one day later.
(China Daily June 27, 2003)
