BUTUO, China - By day, Butuo is an ethnic backwater, where women in long embroidered blue skirts tote baskets filled with chunks of pig, and men in full-length capes carry bundles of twigs, fuel for indoor fire pits. It is a place populated by China's large but impoverished Yi ethnic minority, where donkey carts wind past simple red mud houses dressed for winter, hanging heavy with chains of red pepper and yellow corn. But late at night, scenes of Butuo are drawn with a different palette. Small groups of young men weave past the town's only intersection - pitch black except for an eerie blue glow cast by incongruous advertisements for mobile phones. Visitors are warned not to venture outside. The frigid air is pierced by a cacophony of singing, shouting and arguments until 4 in the morning. [continues 1276 words]
Heroin, Opium In Abundance; Addicts Forced To Say 'No' At Detox BEIJING (AP) -- The heroin trail snakes up from China's borders, into its towns and cities and through the veins of its addicts. But it stops at the Beijing Police Compulsory Drug Detoxification Center. Here, behind brick walls emblazoned with slogans like "Love life," the state makes inmates in striped blue and white pajamas say no to drugs. China's communists shut down opium dens and declared the nation drug-free after they seized power in 1949. But today, all that has changed. Heroin, marijuana, amphetamines, ecstasy -- all are available and abused. Two decades of economic reforms have given people money to buy drugs and opened borders so traffickers can reach them. [continues 544 words]
Myanmar authorities seized a large quantity of amphetamines and drug-refining chemicals in a raid near the border with China. They also destroyed two drug refineries and a clandestine chemical laboratory in the November 6 raid in Laukkai, a town in the northern Kokang region, Radio Yangon said in a dispatch monitored here late Friday. They were acting on a tip-off from Chinese authorities, the report said. Some 53,000 liters of chemicals used to make drugs, 1.5 kilogrammes (3.3 pounds) of heroin and 276 kilogrammes (607 pounds) of amphetamine paste were seized in the raid [continues 82 words]
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Tests, Treatment Are Among Tools BEIJING - The heroin trail snakes up from China's borders, into its towns and cities and through the veins of its addicts. But it stops at the Beijing Police Compulsory Drug Detoxification Center. Here, behind brick walls emblazoned with slogans like ''Love Life,'' the state makes inmates in striped blue and white pajamas say no to drugs. Police took foreign reporters on a brief and controlled tour of the center Wednesday, a sign that China is beginning to treat its worsening drug problem with increasing openness, rather than as an embarrassment best hidden. [continues 498 words]
BEIJING -- Fighting a booming heroin trade, China and three Southeast Asian neighbors announced an agreement Tuesday to step up cross-border police cooperation. The pact came after the first meeting of top anti-drug officials of a region where gangs that straddle borders have benefited from lack of coordinated enforcement. The agreement by China and the countries of the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle" -- Myanmar, Laos and Thailand -- stops short of letting police from one country operate in another. But it commits them to sharing information and collaborating in tracking and arresting smugglers. [continues 260 words]
BEIJING -- Fighting a booming heroin trade, China and three Southeast Asian neighbors announced an agreement Tuesday to step up cross-border police cooperation. The pact came after the first meeting of top anti-drug officials of a region where gangs that straddle borders have benefited from lack of coordinated enforcement. The agreement by China and the countries of the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle" -- Myanmar, Laos and Thailand -- stops short of letting police from one country operate in another. But it commits them to sharing information and collaborating in tracking and arresting smugglers. [continues 259 words]
BEIJING -- China and three Southeast Asian neighbors announced an agreement Tuesday to step up cross-border police cooperation in the fight against a booming heroin trade. The pact came after the first meeting of top anti-drug officials of a region where gangs that straddle borders have benefited from lack of coordinated enforcement. The agreement by China and the countries of the heroin-producing "Golden Triangle" -- Burma, Laos and Thailand -- stops short of letting police from one country operate in another. [continues 58 words]
Drug arrests in China rose 15.4 percent in the first half of the year, and seizures of opium more than doubled, the official news agency said Sunday on the eve of a major anti-drug meeting with its heroin-producing neighbors. Chinese police picked up more than 165,000 people in the first half of this year for drug offenses -- 28,000 of them on suspicion of producing or trafficking drugs, the official Xinhua News Agency said. [end]
BEIJING -- Drug arrests in China rose 15.4 percent in the first half of the year and seizures of opium more than doubled, the official news agency said Sunday on the eve of a major anti-drug meeting with its heroin-producing neighbors. The meeting Monday in Beijing brings together Chinese anti-drug officials and counterparts from Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The "Golden Triangle" region of the Southeast Asian nations accounts for much of the heroin smuggled into China. Chinese police picked up more than 165,000 people in the first half of this year for drug offenses -- 28,000 of them on suspicion of producing or trafficking drugs, the official Xinhua News Agency said. [continues 189 words]
Drug busts in China skyrocketed more than 15 percent in the first half of the year, it was revealed yesterday. The disturbing news came as China today kicks off a major anti-drug conference with its heroin-producing neighbors. Police picked up more than 165,000 people for drug offenses - 28,000 of them on suspicion of producing or trafficking drugs, the official Xinhua News Agency said. And seizures of opium more than doubled to 1.9 tons, while heroin seizures were up 75 percent - at 6.2 tons - compared to the first six months of last year. [continues 244 words]
BEIJING (AP) - Drug arrests in China rose 15.4 percent in the first half of the year and seizures of opium more than doubled, the official news agency said Sunday on the eve of a major anti-drug meeting with its heroin-producing neighbors. The meeting Monday in Beijing brings together Chinese anti-drug officials and counterparts from Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The "Golden Triangle" region of the Southeast Asian nations accounts for much of the heroin smuggled into China. Chinese police picked up more than 165,000 people in the first half of this year for drug offenses - 28,000 of them on suspicion of producing or trafficking drugs, the official Xinhua News Agency said. [continues 189 words]
LUOPING, CHINA A worried Dou Zhe rushed into Dr. Wang Yujia's storefront clinic carrying a precious bundle. "He's sick," announced Mr. Dou, unwrapping layers of colorful blankets from his 2-year-old son, a chubby, listless boy in a blue jumpsuit. "He's normally mischievous, but since tonight he's hot. He just wants to sleep -- he won't eat or play." Dr. Wang, a kindly weathered man in a long white coat, determined that the boy had a red throat and a fever of 102. He had a cold, one that would almost certainly pass on its own in a few days. [continues 1769 words]
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has executed at least 1,781 people since it launched a nationwide campaign against crime in April, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday. Those executed were among at least 2,960 people condemned in the "Strike Hard" campaign, which started as a drive against organized crime but has expanded to target crimes ranging from embezzlement to pimping and ethnic separatist activity, it said. "The campaign is nothing short of an execution frenzy -- a huge waste of human life," the London-based group said. [continues 409 words]
BEIJING -- China executed more people in the last three months than the rest of the world did in the past three years -- 1,781 people put to death in a government campaign against crime, Amnesty International said Friday. The London-based rights group said China has put people to death not just for violent crimes, but also for bribery, embezzlement, fraud, pimping, stealing gasoline, selling harmful foods and drug offenses. "The campaign is nothing short of an execution frenzy, a huge waste of human life," Amnesty said. [continues 377 words]
BEIJING - While other countries marked the United Nations' International Anti-Drugs Day yesterday by burning hauls of contraband or issuing stern warnings to addicts, China continued its record-setting pace of executions, putting to death 62 people. Some of the executions took place before thousands of onlookers in public stadiums, accompanied by pyrotechnics as tons of seized drugs were sent up in flames. A Beijing-based diplomat who has compiled statistics on executions from official press reports estimates more than 1,100 people have been put to death so far in the campaign. [continues 516 words]
BEIJING - China marked a U.N. anti-drug day Tuesday by burning narcotics, staging rallies nationwide and executing dozens of people for drug crimes. Chinese authorities have executed hundreds of people since April in a crime crackdown labeled "Strike Hard" that allows for speeded-up trials and broader use of the death penalty. Thousands of people attended a rally at a stadium in Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, where 20 suspected drug traffickers were sentenced to death, then executed at a separate location, a police official said. Executions are usually done by a gunshot to the head. [continues 61 words]
China executed at least 59 people for drug trafficking on Monday and yesterday, the United Nations International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Twenty were executed in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, after a rally where the condemned were sentenced before thousands of people. China has put more than 1,000 people to death since April in a nationwide anticrime drive, according to Western diplomats tracking executions reported in the state media. Not all executions are announced. [end]
BEIJING - China marked a U.N. anti-drug day yesterday by executing dozens of people for drug crimes, burning narcotics and staging rallies nationwide. Chinese authorities have executed hundreds of people since April in a crime crackdown labeled "Strike Hard" that allows for speeded up trials and broader use of the death penalty. On Monday and Tuesday alone, authorities executed at least 60 people for drug offences. Thousands of people attended a rally at a stadium in Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, where 20 suspected drug traffickers were sentenced to death, then executed at a separate location, a police official said. [continues 231 words]
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