KUNMING, China: China
executed 27 drug traffickers on Wednesday and burnt a tonne of
heroin in the southwestern city of Kunming, near Southeast
Asia's notorious Golden Triangle.

China's fight against drugs would not end until the illegal traffic
had been eradicated, the Xinhua news agency quoted Yang
Jianqiang, Communist Party boss of Kunming, capital of
southwestern Yunnan province, as saying.

The local People's Court passed and carried out the sentence of
capital punishment against 27 traffickers on Wednesday, Xinhua
said.

Su Miaozhi, Gong Dehui, Li Zukuan and Lin Yanqi were caught
ferrying 15.99 kg of heroin from Kunming to Qujing city in January
1995, the news agency said.

Duan Qingfeng was arrested last July in possession of 3.83 kg of
heroin he was trying to sell from home, it said.

Yunnan borders the notorious drugproducing region formed in
the Golden Triangle of Vietnam, Laos and Burma and has become
a frontline in China's battle against drug trafficking, Xinhua
said.

China routinely executes drug traffickers to try to crack down on
smuggling and addiction that have proliferated in recent years.

Beijing's authoritarian communist rulers virtually eradicated drugs
in China, where opium addiction was rampant in the 19th and early
20th centuries, after they swept to power in 1949. REUTER@

[Copyright 1997, Reuters]