Intellasia East Asia News – Indonesia crackdown widens as Cambodia organ trafficking case ensnares law enforcement officials

Police in Indonesia have vowed to step up their battle against organ trafficking after smashing a syndicate involving law enforcement officials and people smugglers who sent 122 poverty-stricken nationals to Cambodia to sell their kidneys.

Authorities last week arrested a policeman, an immigration officer and 10 traffickers, accusing the gang of hiring people from across Indonesia through social media and sending them to Phnom Penh’s military-run Preah Ket Mealea Hospital for kidney transplant surgery.

The suspects were charged with violating Indonesia’s human trafficking law and face a maximum of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to 600 million rupiah (US$40,000) if convicted.

Hengki Haryadi, the Jakarta police director for general crimes, said the victims, who were promised 135 million rupiah (US$9,000) each, had returned to Indonesia.

“The victims agreed to sell their organs because they needed money. Most of them lost their jobs during the pandemic,” Hengki said.

He also said some of the trafficked people remained under medical observation, and that victims included factory workers and teachers.

Hengki said the low-ranking police officer allegedly received 612 million rupiah (US$40,000) for helping the traffickers avoid investigation, while the immigration official, who forged documents for victims to travel overseas, was paid at least 3 million rupiah (US$200) for each person he smuggled to Cambodia.

He said the turnover of the illegal trade in human organs since 2019 by the group of suspects totalled about 24.4 billion rupiah (US$1.6 million).

National police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo pledged to widen the investigation into the case and insisted he would not shy away from punishing erring officers.

He said more than 2,000 human trafficking victims had been rescued and about 800 suspects were arrested as part of a nationwide clampdown on organised crime rings that began last month, The Jakarta Post reported.

The law enforcement blitz came after Indonesian President Joko Widodo last month set up an Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force and Asean leaders in May agreed to increase cooperation in border management, investigation, prosecution and repatriation of victims.

Immigration officials at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport on Tuesday said they had tightened screening of locals flying overseas and foiled more than 3,000 potential trafficking incidents in the first seven months of the year.

Data from the Indonesian Migrant Worker Protection Agency showed only 4.6 million of the 9 million Indonesian migrant workers currently abroad were officially registered by the department.

Citing official statistics, it also said nearly 2,000 Indonesian migrant workers had died in the last three years from abuse or illness.

Indonesia remains in Tier 2 of the latest US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report after concerns, including official complicity in trafficking, were not adequately addressed by the government.

The scourge of organ trade mafia has long been pervading Asian nations, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Pakistan, despite frequent crackdowns on criminal networks.

According to the World Health Organization, 10 per cent of all global organ transplants are done using illegally obtained organs, and living donor kidneys are the most commonly reported form of organ trade.

A report by the Washington-based think tank Global Financial Integrity said the organ trafficking trade generates an estimated $840 million to $1.7 billion annually.

This is not the first time Cambodia’s Preah Ket Mealea Hospital has been linked to organ trafficking. In 2014, two military officials were arrested for facilitating illegal kidney transplants. The medical centre maintained that the surgery was part of a training programme involving Chinese doctors, a claim the Chinese embassy refuted.

A year later, a Cambodian court handed the country’s first-ever convictions for organ trafficking, sentencing two men and a woman to a combined 35 years in prison for paying their relatives to have their kidneys removed in Thailand.

Phnom Penh also has a law banning commercial organ transplants and carries jail terms of up to 20 years, but that rule has failed to stop the murky business from flourishing.

A HCM City court in March sentenced eight members of a kidney-selling syndicate to more than 10 years in prison for sending 37 Vietnamese to Cambodia as organ donors.

Elsewhere in the region, authorities in Pakistan that same month broke up a gang involved in the illegal transplant of kidneys to wealthy foreigners. At least 10 people including doctors, donors and recipients were arrested during a raid on a hidden clinic in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3228999/indonesia-crackdown-widens-cambodia-organ-trafficking-case-ensnares-law-enforcement-officials

Category: Indonesia