China sentences Taiwan drug dealer to death

BEIJING, June 26 (Reuters) A Chinese court sentenced a Taiwanese man to death today for operating a China-based drug trafficking ring, one day after another Taiwanese was executed for similar charges.

Chung Wan-yi was arrested in Kunming, capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, in February after Taiwan police seized 57.4 kg of heroin in containers shipped from Thailand last year and tipped off their Chinese counterparts, the semi-official China News Service said.

One of Chung's accomplices was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, which could be commuted to life imprisonment on condition of good behaviour, China News Service said in its online edition (www.chinanews.com.cn).

The Intermediate People's Court in Kunming jailed two others for 15 years, it added.

All four were from Taiwan, the self-ruled democratic island which Beijing has claimed as its own since their split in 1949 amid civil war.

The sentences came a day after three drug dealers, including one from Taiwan, were executed in the southeastern province of Fujian.

China has timed the sentencing and executions of drug dealers around the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which fell on Tuesday this year.

Yunnan, neighbouring the notorious opium-producing ''Golden Triangle'' in Southeast Asia with a porous border, is at the heart of China's flourishing drug trade.

Beijing has launched a ''people's war'' against drug trafficking with a series of crackdowns and harsh sentences.

REUTERS AK RK1701