The number of Ugandans who have been condemned to death by hanging in China for trafficking in illegal drugs has risen to 20, the country’s envoy to Beijing has said.

Ambassador Charles Madibo Wagidoso told Ugandan journalists on tour in China that up to 54 nationals are currently behind bars in China.
“It is unfortunate but we have more than 50 Ugandans detained in various prisons in China and counting because just last week another one was arrested,” he said. “Twenty have been sentenced to death and the rest have sentences ranging from 15 years to life imprisonment.”

By 2008, eight Ugandans out of a group of 38 apprehended suspects, had been sentenced to death. The envoy spoke of a worrying trend and said there were indications that more women were getting involved in the dodgy business of narcotics, a trade he admitted is claiming youthful jobless victims. Of the 54 locked up, 25 are women, he revealed.

“They are innocent vulnerable young people,” he said. “All of them below 40 years.”
The convicts are held at prisons in Beijing, China’s capital, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, a city frequently thronged by African businessmen, Mr Wagidoso revealed.
He spoke of a narcotics trafficking racket between drug lords in Kampala, Dubai and Thailand, where unemployed Ugandans are recruited into smuggling the drugs with baits of quick cash.

“These people are out of employment and they are normally paid ranging from $3,000 to $5,000 (between Shs6-10 million) for single transmission,” he said. “To an unemployed person, he sees $5,000 as a fortune and will undertake the risk without weighing the problem.”

Narcotics trade is a matter that has put Ugandan travellers to China on police radars following the first arrests and eventual sentencing of more than a dozen countrymen between September 2006 and December 2007.
Many of the suspects were arrested transporting between 800 grammes to a kilogramme of heroine, crimes that carry a maximum death penalty.

The Ugandan government subsequently engaged in closed negotiations with China to lessen the sentences or repatriate its condemned citizens but the talks appear to have dragged on.

Mr Wagidoso said he was still engaging Beijing. “We are negotiating to see if they can be allowed to be extradited to serve their sentences in Uganda so that they can have access to their relatives and friends so that they can be a little more comfortable.”

The ambassador said: “We are getting a good response from the Chinese government but that is now subject to signing of a consular treaty and extradition treaty. When that happens, then we will be able to firmly move forward.”

The envoy admitted, however, to a an obstacle: “There is also the dilemma for the Chinese government; if they do it for one country, will they do it for all the other countries?”