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Updated Wednesday, December 30, 2009 1:47 pm TWN, By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, AP



	This undated handout photo taken in Warsaw, Poland and issued by Reprieve on Monday Dec. 28, 2009 shows Akmal Shaikh. China brushed aside international appeals Tuesday, dEC. 29, 2009 and executed Akmal Shaikh by lethal injection. Akmal Shaikh was a British drug smuggler who relatives say was mentally unstable and unwittingly lured into crime. (AP) Enlarge Photo

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China shows defiance with Briton's execution

But tellingly, Lewis also said "we must and will continue to engage with China."

Recent weeks have seen China flex its new muscle repeatedly, and criticism from the West has mattered little.

Last week, a court sentenced Liu Xiaobo, the co-author of a political reform manifesto, to 11 years in prison in what rights groups called a direct rebuff to international pressure.

Earlier in the month, China urged Cambodia to interrupt a U.N. refugee screening process and subsequently Phnom Penh repatriated 20 ethnic Uighur asylum-seekers accused of involvement in ethnic unrest in western China.

The drug trafficking accusation against Shaikh made the case particularly sensitive in China, said University of Miami politics expert June Teufel Dreyer. Chinese nationalists say European powers, especially Britain, foisted opium on an unwitting populace in the 19th century after the country was forced to open its borders to European trade.

"Part of the narrative of the communists' liberating China from oppression is the wicked practice of foreign imperialist powers foisting drugs on a weak China," Dreyer said.

Eradicating widespread opium use was one of the founding legacies of the communist state, and Chinese nationalists have long pointed to the introduction of the drug as evidence of the nefarious influence of foreign powers.

Shaikh, a Pakistan-born former cab company manager, was arrested in 2007 for carrying a suitcase with almost 9 pounds (4 kilograms) of heroin into China on a flight from Tajikistan. His cousins said he was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace.

He was convicted in 2008 after a half-hour trial. China has said there was no proof he was mentally ill, but one of Shaikh's Beijing-based lawyers said Tuesday that the country's highest court never evaluated his client's mental status.

The state-run Xinhua news agency said Shaikh was put to death by lethal injection. Earlier this year, Amnesty International said China executed at least 1,718 people in 2008. The exact number is not known.

The press office of the Xinjiang region where Shaikh had been held confirmed the execution.

The last known European executed in China was Antonio Riva, an Italian pilot who was shot by a firing squad in 1951 after being convicted of involvement in what China said was a plot to assassinate Mao Zedong.

Shaikh's daughter Leilla Horsnell was quoted by the BBC and other British media outlets as saying she was "shocked and disappointed that the execution went ahead with no regards to my dad's mental health problems, and I struggle to understand how this is justice."

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Comments

December 31, 2009 cia-yes@

For the sake of human rights, should we let all the criminals loose? This is why crime is higher in Western countries than the Asian countries like Singapore and Japan.

December 31, 2009 johnlohsfx@

It is very unfortunate Akmal Shaikh is a victim of a large pawn game between the West & China which has been going on for a couple of decades. The full state honors accorded to the Dalai Lama, the baseless accusation of sabotaging of the Copenhagen talks, the double standard in relation to economic matters sure does nothing to help.

January 4, 2010 lifejourney@

johnlohsfx@ wrote:
It is very unfortunate Akmal Shaikh is a victim of a large pawn game between the West & China which has been going on for a couple of decades. The full state honors accorded to the Dalai Lama, the baseless accusation of sabotaging of the Copenhagen talks, the double standard in relation to economic matters sure does nothing to help.

How do you feel when the East has the power to enforce its own law of the land? No more barbaric act from the western world can impose its will on any nation any longer. The western power is shrinking by the day as the world grows stronger.

January 5, 2010 mtsai16@

cia-yes@ wrote:
For the sake of human rights, should we let all the criminals loose? This is why crime is higher in Western countries than the Asian countries like Singapore and Japan.

Release criminals so that criminal recidivism will terrorize us law-abiding citizens again and take away OUR human rights?

Just to tease your conclusion a bit, I would be interested to know if any "Asian" countries have higher crime rates than Western countries.

January 5, 2010 mtsai16@

lifejourney@ wrote:
How do you feel when the East has the power to enforce its own law of the land? No more barbaric act from the western world can impose its will on any nation any longer. The western power is shrinking by the day as the world grows stronger.

The British Empire reached its height not because citizens in its colonies were "enchanted" by British "friendliness", hospitality" or even "Cool Brittania".

All empires grow employing every capitalistic means at their disposal.