China has executed three drug dealers and sentenced at least seven others to death, state media reported yesterday, on the eve of the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
The death penalties were among a series of harsh sentences handed down in more than 20 separate cases by courts from Shanghai to Shenzhen, Xinhua news agency said.
Among the three executed in Fujian Province was a drug dealer from Taiwan, identified as Tseng Fu-wen (曾富文), it said.
CRACKDOWN
“As the number and scale of drug dealing cases have been increasing in recent years, the court has raised its strength to crack down,” the report quoted Zhang Zhijie, deputy chief judge at Shanghai’s Second Intermediate People’s Court, as saying.
Zhang was speaking after his court handed down three death sentences, including one for an unemployed man caught with 3.5kg of drugs, Xinhua said.
Two other death sentences were handed down at a court in Shenzhen on Monday, it said.
It did not specify the drugs involved in any of the cases.
China regularly steps up executions of drug traffickers ahead of the anti-drug day to signal its determination in fighting narcotics-related crime.
The Chinese government has been severely criticized for its frequent use of the death penalty, especially by overseas rights groups.
NO STATISTICS
The government does not publish official statistics on executions, but Chen Zhonglin (陳中林), a delegate to the National People’s Congress, was quoted by official media in 2004 as saying the figure was 10,000 annually.
Chinese legal officials have signaled the death penalty will endure and cite public support as a major reason.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS