Pubdate: Thur, 24 Dec 1998
Source: Reuters
Copyright: 1998 Reuters Limited.

CHINA'S SHENZHEN EXECUTES 11 FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING

SHENZHEN, China, Dec 24 (Reuters) - China's southern boomtown of Shenzhen
executed 11 drug dealers, including a teenaged girl, in the city's second
major judicial killing this year, the Special Zone Daily said on Thursday.

The Shenzhen intermediate people's court sentenced 17 people for drug-
related crimes on Wednesday, and 11 were handed the death penalty then
immediately taken away to be shot, it said.

In the city's largest-ever mass execution, 30 people were killed by a firing
squad in August for crimes ranging from murder and robbery to dealing in
guns and bullets, local media have said.

Chinese courts hand out capital punishment for a wide variety of offences,
including economic crimes and trafficking in cultural relics.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said in a report
last year that China executed more people in the 1990s than the rest of the
world put together.

Executions in China are generally carried out by a single bullet to the base
of the skull, although some cities are experimenting with lethal injection.

The newspaper gave details on only four of those killed, including, 20-year
old Zhuang Jianxiong, who was found with 390 grams (13.65 ounces) of heroin,
the newspaper said.

He was apprehended as he tried to sell the drugs at a travel agency in
Shenzhen's suburban Longang district with 18-year-old accomplice Tang
Linjiao. She was also executed, it said.

Police caught Lin Zhuoshan and Lin Hailong in a hotel with 300 grams (10.5
ounces) of heroin hidden in a bag of lychee fruit, and 920 grams (2.02
pounds) were later uncovered in Lin Hailong's home, it said.

Although drug abuse had been all but wiped out in China during the early
year of Communist rule, use of illegal narcotics has risen since the late
1980s, as economic reforms have boosted personal incomes and loosened social
mores.

Shenzhen, a freewheeling special economic zone which borders Hong Kong, acts
as a conduit for heroin factories in the southwestern province of Yunnan.

Courts are particularly hard on heroin traffickers, as the poppy- derived
drug evokes memories of widespread opium addiction in pre- Communist years,
after China was defeated by Britain in the 19th-century Opium Wars.

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Checked-by: Don Beck