Refugees are selling organs to get to Australia as Islamic State gets involved
ASYLUM seekers are selling their organs to get to Australia, as we can reveal how Islamic State is now involved in the illegal organ trade.
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EXCLUSIVE
Asylum seekers are selling their kidneys so they can pay to get on a boat to Australia, a News Corp investigation into the illegal organ trade has found.
And terror group ISIS is organising for Syrian refugees to sell their organs to get their family passage into Europe.
A three-year News Corp investigation has found almost 100 desperate Australians have paid to have an illegal transplant overseas because demand for organs here outstrips supply.
The unregulated trade is seeing prisoners shot on demand to supply human organs and poor people forced by debt collectors to sell their kidneys for as little as $1,000 while doctors involved charge up to $250,000 per transplant.
Only six million Australians have registered to donate their organs when they die and News Corp is campaigning to get millions more Australians to register to stifle the illegal trade in organs.
This risk facing Australians who turn to the black market has become very grave and now Griffith University academic Campbell Fraser has found terrorists are involved in the trade.
Dr Fraser who has interviewed 1,000 people who have bought and sold organs says attempts to close down the trade in human organs has pushed up the price of illegal transplants to over $100,000.
“This has made the profits large enough to attract the interest of terrorists, people smugglers and organised crime figures,” he says.
As part of our investigation into the illegal organ trade, News Corp visited Chennai in India where we found refugees were selling their kidneys to get to Australia.
Sri Lankan Refugee advocate Samuel Chandrahasan says around 500 Sri Lankan refugees have sold their organs in the last three years to help cover the $3,000 bill to get to Australia by boat.
“Men and women have been exploited and they are cheated … and this is most offensive,” he told News Corp.
“No-one in the refugee camps has been involved but (refugees) outside have been victimised.
“The people who get involved in this people smuggling effort become indebted and their families left behind have enormous problems they face having to pay back the loans,” he says.
Mr Chandrahasan says the refugees are taken to hospitals in Colombo where their kidneys are removed.
“The numbers are close to a few hundred over a period of three years.”
News Corp has spoken to doctors in Sri Lanka who confirm there is a booming trade in organ trafficking in that country with up to 13 doctors involved.
Doctors trying to close down the trade have received death threats.
News Corp interviewed six Sri Lankan refugees living in India who said they were aware of fellow refugees who had sold their kidneys to get to Australia.
“I have heard and seen people donate a kidney in the camp,” a 42 year old mother living in a refugee camp told News Corp.
“For their children they will do whatever they can do to get to Australia.”
It’s estimated around 1,000 foreigners from Israel, Malaysia, the Maldives and other countries are travelling to Sri Lanka each year to buy a human organ and have it transplanted.
Sri Lankan doctors are making lots of money, up to $60,000 per transplant, and the operations are taking place in private hospitals.
Sri Lankan authorities are turning a blind eye because they share in some of the payment, News Corp has been told.
“Organ sales are rife in Sri Lanka, it’s a cesspit,” says Professor Jeremy Chapman the head of the International Transplantation Society dedicated to ending organ trafficking.
Dr Fraser has compelling evidence that Syrian refugees from the ISIS controlled Yarmouk Refugee Camp are selling their organs to get a passage to Europe.
The involvement of people traffickers in the business has seen a 500 per cent increase in the price of an illegal transplant.
The price for an illegal organ transplant used to be $20,000 to $30,000, now its $100,000.
“All the organ sellers in Egypt are coming from the refugee camps,” says Dr Fraser says.
“What IS is doing is if refugees want to go to Europe, if they don’t have enough money they are given the option of selling a kidney.
“That serves as a passage to Europe for five family members. The family gets no money and the traffickers sell the kidney for $60,000,” he told News Corp.
In 2008 organ donors in Egypt came from all over the world but since 2012 they have come almost exclusively from Syria, only 12 of the 118 donors he interviewed from 2013 were not from Syria, his data shows.
In Egypt the illegal organ transplants are almost always done in small clinics, often abortion clinics, in Cairo and Alexandria, they usually do the surgery in Friday the holy day.
Dr Fraser’s work has attracted the interest of the FBI, the Transnational Crime and Terrorism Centre in Washington, Interpol and police forces around the world who are concerned the proceeds from the organ trade may be funding terrorism.
“We’re a victim of our own success,” he says.
“The advances the good guys have made have closed a lot of businesses and the price has gone through the roof, there is now enough profit to pay the surgeon and still make a profit and its totally changed the game, we’ve inadvertently created a monster,” he said
“Before the surgeons were in control now they are working for organised crime bosses,” he says.
Originally published as Refugees are selling organs to get to Australia as Islamic State gets involved
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