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, reports the Herald Sun news agency.
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.
-Agencies
