Initially sentenced to life in prison after his arrest in 2005, Frenchman Chan Thao Phoumy was retried after the emergence of “new elements” and sentenced to the death penalty by a Guangzhou court for manufacturing, transporting, smuggling and trafficking methamphetamine.
Frenchman Chan Thao Phoumy, sentenced to death in 2010 in China for drug trafficking, was executed in Canton, in the south of the country, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, expressing consternation.
The 62-year-old citizen, born in Laos, was executed “despite the mobilization of the French authorities, including to obtain a decision of clemency, for humanitarian reasons, for the benefit of our compatriot”, said the Ministry in a statement on Saturday, reaffirming France’s opposition to the death penalty “everywhere and in all circumstances” and calling for “universal abolition”.
“We particularly regret that Chan’s defense did not have access to the last court hearing, which constitutes a violation of the rights of the person concerned,” he added in the same note.
Initially sentenced to life in prison after his arrest in 2005, Chan Thao Phoumy was retried after “new elements” emerged and sentenced to death by a Guangzhou court for manufacturing, transporting, smuggling and trafficking methamphetamine.
Chan Thao Phoumy was accused of being part of a network that, between 1999 and 2003, produced tons of this synthetic drug in China..
Asked today about the case of Chan Thao Phoumy, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not comment on details of the case.
“The fight against crimes related to drug trafficking is the responsibility of all States”, according to a statement sent to the France-Presse news agency (AFP).
A China “treats defendants of different nationalities equally, manages cases rigorously and equitably in accordance with the law, and protects the rights and legal treatment of the parties involved”indicated Chinese diplomacy in the same note.
The case of Chan Thao Phoumy
Data from the association Ensemble contre la peine de mort (ECPM, Together against the death penalty in a free translation) from 2025 indicated that Chan Thao Phoumy was part of a group of four French people sentenced to death around the world, together with Nora Lalam, convicted in 2005 in Algeria, and Stéphane Aït Idir and Redouane Hammadi, convicted in Morocco for the Marrakesh attack in 1994.
Another Frenchman sentenced to death in Indonesia in 2007, Serge Atlaoui, was transferred to France in February 2025 after a diplomatic agreementand the French court commuted the sentence to 30 years in prison, having been released from prison in July.
In the latest report on the death penalty, from 2024, the non-governmental human rights organization Amnesty International estimated that China is “the country in the world that has carried out the most executions”, with “thousands of people sentenced to death and executed” every year.
China does not publish official statistics on the use of the death penalty, considering them a state secret.
