Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 Source: Associated Press (Wire) Copyright: 2001 Associated Press Section: International News CHINA MARKS U.N. ANTI-DRUG DAY WITH EXECUTIONS, PUBLIC RALLIES BEIJING - China marked a United Nations anti-drug day Tuesday by executing at least 59 people, burning narcotics and staging mass rallies nationwide. "Drug abuse, drug trafficking are indeed very terrible problems of our day," U.N. deputy spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said at U.N. headquarters in New York. "It affects the whole world, it spares no country, rich or poor." He said a 1998 U.N. convention provides the legal framework for the fight against drug trafficking but "as far as I am aware the convention does not provide for the application of the death penalty." Thousands of people attended a rally at a stadium in Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, where 20 drug traffickers were sentenced to death, said a city police official. Using remote-control detonators, officials ignited 2 tons of confiscated heroin placed in large metal pans and doused with gasoline. State television showed the spectacle live on its noon news broadcast. The executions were carried out immediately afterward at a separate location, the Kunming police official said. Chinese authorities have executed hundreds of people since April in a renewed crime crackdown labeled "Strike Hard" by the government that allows speeded up trials and broader use of the death penalty. European Union diplomats in Beijing, monitoring reports in Chinese state-run media, have tallied more than 1,000 executions and many more death sentences in the crackdown on violent and gang-related crime. Executions are usually carried out in China by a gunshot to the head. Separately on Tuesday, eight people in the central city of Wuhan and eight people on the southern island of Hainan were executed for drug trafficking. Yunnan authorities also executed Li Shaoju, a citizen of Myanmar, on Monday for smuggling more than 135 kilograms (300 pounds) of heroin, opium, and morphine from Myanmar to China, newspapers reported. In coastal Fujian province, five Taiwanese citizens were executed Monday for attempting to smuggle crystal methamphetamine _ also known as "ice" to Taiwan. Eighteen heroin traffickers were also executed Monday in Chongqing, a city in southwestern China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. China has detained 15,000 suspected drug dealers and seized 2.2 tons of heroin, 1.2 tons of opium, and 2 tons of "ice," in the first five months of the year, state media reported. In particular, "ice" and ecstasy are being produced in larger amounts, Jia Chunwang, the Minister of Public Security said in comments published in the English-language China Daily. The number of registered drug addicts in China has risen to 860,000 in 2000 from 681,000 in 1999, according to the Ministry of Public Security. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth