Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

Lecture Resources

 

[Lecture Resources | Resources for Teachers | Country-by-Country Reports ]

Sale of Organs

 

Albania

Help the Children

Information and Research Centre for Children's Rights in Albania, Newsletter 224, June 5,2004

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 3 September 2011]

THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT DISCUSSES THE ORGAN TRANSPLANTS IN ALBANIA - According to these articles, a clinic in Fieri city, practices the removal of the children organs to further transport them in Italy and France, with involvement by Italian and French groups and individuals», writes Karamanu in her letter. «According to the media, these doctors mobilise Albanian networks, which pay the children’s parents whose organs are removed. Apart form this, figures report 39 missing children with no trace in Albania and their parents making no effort to find them.

 

 

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan probes child-organ traffickers

BBC News, 23 February, 2004

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3513439.stm

[accessed 20 January 2011]

The Azerbaijani government says it is keen to crack down on child traffickers who are believed to take children abroad and sell their organs for profit.

"Under the guise of adoption, children who are allegedly afflicted by grave diseases are taken out of Azerbaijan, ostensibly for treatment," Mr Abbasov told the country's ANS television.   "In the course of our investigations, it has come to light that these children are used for organ transplants, but we have no hard evidence," he said.

 

 

Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Moldova, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Romania

Organ trafficking: a fast-expanding black market

IHS Jane's, 05 March 2008

www.traffickingproject.org/2008/03/organ-trafficking-fast-expanding-black.html

[accessed 26 June 2013]

China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, the Philippines, Moldova, and Romania are among the world's leading providers of trafficked organs. If China is known for harvesting and selling organs from executed prisoners, the other countries have been dealing essentially with living donors, becoming stakeholders in the fast-growing human trafficking web.

 

 

China

'Alarming' Trade in Human Organ Trafficking

Reuters, Manila, June 7, 2007

www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/07/us-crime-trafficking-philippines-idUSMAN28233220070607

[accessed 13 June 2013]

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expressed alarm on Thursday over rising cases of trade in human organs in Asia, and said globalization had increased risks of human trafficking.

Reed said many trafficking cases in Asia "end up in situations of forced begging, delinquency, adoption, false marriage, or most recently, as victims of the thriving trade in human organs".  He said trafficking for organs was on the rise in China and in many impoverished states in Southeast Asia, like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.

 

 

Czech Republic

Six charged in organ trafficking case at Brno hospital

Jan Richter, Radio Prague, 17-08-2007

www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/six-charged-in-organ-trafficking-case-at-brno-hospital

[accessed 31 January 2011]

Between 2003 and 2004, five employees of the tissue bank at the Brno-Bohunice hospital, together with one outsider, sold 7 million crowns worth of skin graft to a Dutch company. The Organized Crime Squad of the Czech police have now finished investigating the case and charged the persons involved with illegal organ trafficking.

It took the Czech police three and a half years to close the case of illegal organ trafficking at a hospital in Brno, Moravia. Two skin tissue specialists, three other staff members and one of their relatives have been charged with illegal organ trafficking, a crime punishable in the Czech Republic only since 2002. The police operation, code named "Human", the first of its kind in the country, targeted illegal sales of skin graft to a Dutch company.

 

 

Egypt

Organ trafficking on the rise in Egypt, says new report

Sarah Sheffer, Bikya Masr (Egyptian: resellable clutter), Cairo, 12 December 2011

www.masress.com/en/bikyamasr/50684

[accessed 13 June 2013]

A shocking new report by the Coalition for Organ Failure Solutions (COFS) Egypt indicates that organ trafficking is on the rise in the country, as traffickers continue to target Sudanese refugees and other asylum seekers in the nation.  According to the report, entitled “Sudanese Victims of Organ Trafficking in Egypt,” traffickers remove the kidneys of their victims “either by inducing consent, coercion, or outright theft.”  The report was written based on case studies of 57 Sudanese refugees, including men, women, and children, who said they were victims of organ trafficking.

COFS estimates that there are thousands of victims of organ trafficking in Egypt. Refugees are the most common victims, as traffickers seek to exploit their insecure legal status in the country.

 

 

India

'Dr Kidney' arrest exposes Indian organ traffic

Sandhya Srinivasan, Inter Press Service News Agency IPS, Mumbai, Feb 22, 2008

www.traffickingproject.org/2008/02/dr-kidney-arrest-exposes-indian-organ.html

[accessed 26 January 2016]

www.ipsnews.net/2008/02/health-south-asia-hub-for-global-organ-trade/

[accessed 28 April 2020]

The arrest of "Doctor Kidney" Amit Kumar for running a sizeable racket in live kidneys has highlighted the role that South Asia plays as the hub of an international trade in human organs.  A sophisticated but unregulated healthcare industry, a "donor pool" of desperately poor people ready to sell a kidney, and a corrupt monitoring system have combined to create a special brand of "medical tourism" in the region, especially in India and neighboring Pakistan.

Kumar is accused of luring poor laborers to his "hospital" in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon with promises of job offers or large sums of money. Typically, they were promised 300,000 rupees (US$7,500) but paid only 30,000 ($750) after the surgery, police said.  He is alleged to have conducted more than 500 transplants over an unspecified period, charging up to $50,000 dollars for each operation. Investigators say his patients came from Britain, the United States, Turkey, Nepal, Dubai, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

 

 

Iran

The price of Iranian girls after entering the Persian Gulf trafficking market May 2005

SINA News Agency, 6 July 2004

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 6 September 2011]

The Colonel adds: ?The girls who run away from home have no idea what the future holds for them. We have 200 missing girls in Tehran, as we speak and we only know of the fate of a few. There are many rings lurking for these young women and girls. They use these run-a-way girls for stealing, trafficking and for illicit drugs and sex. Most of all they use these victims for their organs.? Every once in a while bodies of unknown girls are found here and there in large cities, particularly in Tehran. Some of these bodies are identified; however most of them are buried without being identified because no one comes to claim their body.

The dealers of human organs are also trafficking girls by promising them a better life and transporting them across borders. Once taken to another country, the traffickers sell the girls? body parts for enormous amounts of money.

 

 

Italy

Italy Rushes in Law to Ban 'Spare Part' Baby Sales

Bruce Johnston in Rome, The Telegraph, May 18, 2003

www.vachss.com/help_text/a2/italy_baby_sales.html

[accessed 14 February 2011]

Italy's government has vowed to push through legislation to stop the sale of human organs after a female gang auctioned off a newborn child near the southern port of Bari, possibly so that its organs could be used for transplants.

The three-strong gang of Ukrainians, including the baby's mother, sold the boy for 350,000 euros (£250,000) while he was still in the womb, not realising that the successful bidders were undercover carabinieri police officers.

 

 

Moldova

Government officials behind record rise in Moldova organ trade

Karen Ryan, The Tiraspol Times & Weekly Review, Chisinau, 23/Feb/2007

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 8 September 2011]

There are villages in the Southern region of Moldova where almost all the inhabitants sold organs in order to escape the extreme poverty they live in. The "commerce" goes on with the agreement of the Chisinau authorities, DPA reports.

 

 

Mozanbique

Six held over nun's murder in Mozambique

The Australian,  2 March 2004

cathnews.acu.edu.au/403/12.php

[accessed 22 February 2011]

www.iol.co.za/news/africa/brazilian-missionary-found-dead-in-mozambique-206721

[accessed 13 January 2020]

Four missionary nuns living in the same town told Portuguese radio TSF last week that they had recently had a narrow escape from an armed ambush after presenting what they said was evidence that local children were being killed so that their organs could be sold.  The four nuns told a Spanish newspaper earlier this month that they had gathered testimony from would-be victims of the network who had managed to escape and had photographs of dead children with missing organs.

 

 

Philippines

Filipino children sell kidneys to help parents

Barbara Mae Dacanay, Bureau Chief, Gulf News, June 23, 2009

gulfnews.com/news/world/philippines/filipino-children-sell-kidneys-to-help-parents-1.29276

[accessed 16 December 2010]

RELATED :: www.abc.net.au/news/2008-04-18/desperately-poor-filipinos-sell-kidneys/2409350

[accessed 5 May 2020]

Some 250 Filipinos, two of them below 18, have sold one of their kidneys to recruiters who supply them to patients who need transplants, a local paper has said.   "Someone recruited them and they were paid 112,000 pesos (Dh8,493) each for their kidneys," Abueva said, adding that forcing or persuading Filipino children to sell their kidneys is the newest form of child exploitation in the country today.   Syndicates are now using online marketing, through the internet, where they offer organs to prospective foreign and local buyers, said Dr Benita Padilla of the National Kidney and Transplant Institute.

 

 

Philippines

NBI raises alarm on child-organ trafficking

ABS-CBN News Online, 24 Aug 2008

unionssaynotochildlabor.com/nbi-raises-alarm-on-child-organ-trafficking/

[accessed 16 December 2010]

news.abs-cbn.com/nation/metro-manila/08/24/08/nbi-raises-alarm-child-organ-trafficking

[accessed 12 February 2018]

The National Bureau of Investigation alerted the public on Sunday over the rampant smuggling of human organs in the Philippines. The NBI said smugglers are now targeting childen who are kidnapped and taken abroad where their organs are sold to foreign nationals.  The human smugglers, whose usual buyers are Middle Eastern nationals, allegedly abduct children and house them somewhere in Mindanao.  Lawyer Ferdinand Lavin of the NBI's Human Trafficking Division said the victims are provided with vitamin supplements to keep their internal organs healthy. He said the victims will then be transported outside the country to undergo surgery for organ transplants.

 

 

Zimbabwe

Combat Human Trafficking

[Category – Sale of Organs]

The Herald, Harare, 10 April 2007

allafrica.com/stories/200704100256.html

[accessed 18 June 2013]

Markets for body parts in the southern Africa region seem to be on the upsurge as reports indicate that numbers of missing girl children and women are shooting up, particularly in neighbouring countries.  The human parts found in the plastic bag in Bindura are suspected breasts and private parts of a woman probably trafficked under the pretext of job promises.  Human body parts are believed to enhance profits in business and the belief seems to be widespread in this region.

 

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