At least 20 people were executed, an equal number condemned and hundreds put on trial as China marked a global anti-drug day with stark warnings on illicit drug use, state press said yesterday.
The executions and trials took place throughout the nation in recent days, Xinhua news agency reported, with six convicted traffickers executed in Beijing alone on Thursday.
June 26 marks the UN’s International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, a date when China has traditionally executed and sentenced convicted drug traffickers.
Among those sentenced to death was a Nigerian man identified by Xinhua as Osonwa Okey Noberts, who was convicted by a court in Guangdong Province of trafficking nearly 6kg of heroin.
Other cases of international smuggling included a Chinese man convicted and sentenced to death in Beijing for trafficking 197g of methamphetamine from North Korea, the China Daily reported.
Two ethnic Koreans were also being tried for smuggling the drug into China from North Korea. Their citizenship was not given.
Meanwhile, police in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang this week destroyed six tonnes of heroin, opium and hemp smuggled in from Afghanistan and Pakistan and valued at 300 million yuan (US$44 million), Xinhua said.
Courts across China handled more than 14,000 drug-related cases between January and last month, up 12 percent from the same period last year, it said.
Nearly 6,400 people have been convicted of drug crimes and received sentences ranging from five years in jail to the death sentence over that period, it said.
“There is a growing trend toward making [illegal drugs] on the mainland instead of smuggling ... from abroad,” the China Daily quoted Zhang Jun (張軍), vice head of the Supreme People’s Court, as saying. “There are more cases of smuggling and trading of chemical raw materials for drug production.”
State media reports cited authorities saying “designer” drugs such as methamphetamine, ecstasy and ketamine were emerging as a new and dangerous segment of the drug market.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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