CHINA SENTENCES DOZENS OF DRUG DEALERS TO DEATH

China has sentenced dozens of drug dealers to death ahead of the
International Day Against Drug Abuse, despite a chorus of protests by
human rights groups, state media has reported.

In the south-western city of Chongqing alone, 16 drug traffickers
received death sentences in a public trial on Saturday, the designated
international anti-drug day, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In Shanghai, one man was executed for smuggling 1.8 kg of heroin into
the city from Burma, it said.

State media said on Friday that executions had taken place in the
south-western province of Yunnan, the southern province of Guangdong,
the eastern province of Zhejiang, the north-western province of
Shaanxi and the western region of Xinjiang.

Photographs splashed on official Web sites showed masked,
machinegun-toting police gripping the arms of convicts in prison garb.

A convicted drug dealer usually receives either a bullet in the back
of the head or a lethal injection.

Rights groups such as Amnesty International, which opposes the death
penalty in all cases, called on Beijing to halt drug-related
executions and review future use of the death penalty.

"We have seen an annual spree of executions in China in the run-up to
UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in
previous years," it said in a statement.

"Yet no convincing evidence has ever been produced that the death
penalty deters would-be traffickers and users more effectively than
any other punishment," it said.

China executed at least 50 people on drug-related charges last year,
but drug use, related crimes and trafficking are actually rising
despite these tactics, Amnesty said.

China, which borders the Southeast Asian "Golden Triangle" and
Afghanistan, two of the world's biggest opium producers, faces a
serious and growing drug problem.

It has more than one million registered addicts, and many more who are
not registered.