China marks UN anti-drug day with 43 executions

China has executed at least 43 people for drug crimes and staged mass rallies nationwide to mark a UN anti-drug day.

Thousands of spectators attended a rally at a stadium in Kunming where 20 alleged drug traffickers were sentenced to death.

Using remote control-detonators, Government officials also ignited two tons of confiscated heroin placed in large metal pans and doused with gasoline.

State television carried the spectacle live on its noon news broadcast.

The executions were carried out immediately afterwards at a separate location, a Kunming police official said.

Separately, Yunnan police also executed Burmese citizen Li Shaoju for smuggling more than 135kgs of heroin, opium, and morphine from Myanmar to China, newspapers report.

In coastal Fujian province, five Taiwanese citizens were executed for attempting to smuggle crystal methamphetamine - also known as ice - across the strait to Taiwan. Eighteen heroin traffickers were also executed in Chongqing, a city in southwestern China, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

China has detained 15,000 suspected drug dealers, and seized 2.2 tons of heroin, 1.2 tons of opium, and 2 tons of ice, in the first five months of the year. In particular, ice and ecstacy are being produced in larger amounts, Jia Chunwang, the Minister of Public Security said.

The number of registered drug addicts in China has risen from 681,000 in 1999 to 860,000 in 2000, according to the Ministry of Public Security.

Police have carried out hundreds of executions since April under a renewed crime crackdown that allows speeded-up trials and broader use of the death penalty. Executions are usually carried out by a gunshot to the back of the head.