CHINA: China announced it had executed at least 50 drug criminals and Burma, the world's largest opium producer, burnt narcotics said to be worth a billion dollars as Asia marked world anti-drugs day yesterday.
In China 14 people were sentenced to death in Sichuan province, with nine of them immediately taken to the execution grounds and shot, the China News Service reported.
At least 36 more Chinese have been reported executed in the past week to mark the United Nations International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.
President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia said: "For those who distribute drugs, life sentences and other prison sentences are no longer sufficient." She added: "No sentence is sufficient other than the death sentence."
In Burma the military junta burned drugs it said were worth $1 billion in its latest attempt to convince critics it is committed to eradicating drugs trafficking.
US Drug Enforcement Agency officials helped conduct spot checks to verify the destruction.
But according to the latest State Department anti-narcotics report, Burma is the world's largest producer of illicit opium.
In Asia's other major source of illegal drugs, President Hamid Karzai pledged to clean up Afghanistan's reputation by ending its rampant narcotics trade.
His promise comes after the UN said Afghanistan produces up to 90 per cent of Europe's heroin.
"We want our children to live in a country free of drugs," he said.
Pakistan said its anti-narcotics forces were ill-equipped to combat soaring supplies of heroin expected from Afghanistan where farmers had taken advantage of the fall of the Taliban to resume lucrative opium poppy cultivation.
In Cambodia several hundred people marched through the capital Phnom Penh to appeal for an end to growing drug use.- (AFP)