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| Sunday, 5 June 2005 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Chinese police set fire to seized drugs BEIJING, Saturday (AFP) Police in China have burnt 224 kilogrammes (493 pounds) of drugs with an estimated street value of around 12 million dollars to mark the 166th anniversary of the Opium Wars with Britain, state media reported Saturday. The drugs, which included heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines and were seized from dealers and addicts in 2002 and 2003, were set ablaze Friday in Beijing, the China Daily said. Since the late 1990s police in the capital have burnt drugs every two years on June 3 to mark the anniversary of the start of the Opium Wars. On June 3, 1839 Lin Zexu, a senior official of China's Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), ordered the destruction of about 1,000 tons of smuggled opium confiscated from foreign dealers in the southern province of Guangdong. The incident served as a pretext for Britain to start, in the name of free trade, the first of series of Opium Wars which resulted in China being forced to make territorial concessions and reparations. In 2003 more than 600 kilogrammes of illegal stimulants went up in flames, according to the English-language daily. |
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