China

Where darkness knows no limits

This month Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report detailing the experiences of former detainees in the drug detoxification centers in China's Yunnan province.

The song Akmal Shaikh said would bring world peace

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Akmal Shaikh is a UK citizen facing the death sentence in China for drug smuggling. Akmal suffers from a serious mental illness and it is obvious that a criminal group took advantage of his vulnerable state. They convinced him that he could become a pop star and that he would become famous in China.

This man is clearly not responsible for his actions click here to try and save this man from the death penalty

Stop the Execution of Akmal Shaikh

 

Chinese Communist Party Secretary dies from official binge-drinking

Today many British newspapers are reporting on the death of Shen Hao, 46, the communist Party Secretary of Fengyang county's Xiaogang village, who died on Friday after an official binge-drinking-prone banquet. Mr Shen is now the third victim of a new tradition of lush business events in which drinking heavily is the way to prove status and engage in conversation. Previous victims were Jin Guoqing, deputy director of water resources in Xinzhou district (47) and Guo Shizhong, a family planning official from Xinyang, Central China's Henan province.

Crossing the Redline: Two Issues that Need Urgent Improvement in China’s Methadone Maintenance Treatment

Crossing the Redline:
Two Issues that Need Urgent Improvement in China’s
Methadone Maintenance Treatment

WANG Wen

Mentally ill British man faces execution in China for heroin smuggling

A 53 year old father of five from North London may be executed by Chinese authorities any day now as his appeal against drug smuggling charges was rejected. Akmal Shaikh who had run a successful taxi company was arrested on 12 September 2007 in Urumqui north-west China carrying 4kg of heroin in his luggage.

The Difference Between Quitting and Not Quitting Drugs

One night in April of 2006, I was bathing with a friend at the bathhouse on a major street in Beijing. As I was resting in the big hall, suddenly many policemen rushed in, running straight for us in a very bad temper. They dragged us to their office, and didn’t even let us dress ourselves before we had to go.

Policeman: “Just finished shooting up, huh?”

This time I said, emboldened: “I’ve quit for a long time!”

Chinese methadone promotion

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Methadone, as sponsored by the Chinese Construction Industry.

Chinese methadone advert

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Who would have thought that getting off the streets and beating your habit could be so straightforward? It only takes thirty seconds.

Illicit drug use in China has risen rapidly since the late 1980s. The number of registered drug users increased from 70,000 in 1990 to more than 1 million by the end of 2005. For this reason China began the methadone maintenance treatment program for controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS that had became a major problem in most of the Chinese provinces.

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