Desperate Syrian refugees are resorting to selling their organs on the black market just to pay rent – By Christina Capatides, Holly Williams (CBS News) / May 19 2020
More than 3 million Syrian refugees have crossed the border into Turkey to escape the violence in their country. While they may now be physically safe, financially, they are anything but. Some find it so difficult to make ends meet in their new home that they’ve taken to selling their organs just to pay rent.
In “Selling Organs to Survive,” part of the “Down to Earth” documentary series, CBS News foreign correspondent Holly Williams and producer Haitham Moussa traveled to the border of Turkey to investigate posts on Facebook offering desperate refugees money for their kidneys and livers. Using hidden cameras, they uncovered a sobering tale of black market actors preying on a vulnerable population – and often cheating them out of the meager funds they were promised after the deed was done.
Abu Abdullah fled Syria and its civil war four years ago. Now, he scrapes together a living as a metal worker in Turkey, earning just $300 a month.
When Abdullah saw a post on Facebook offering money for human organs, he was in dire enough financial straits to make a deal with an organ broker to sell one of his kidneys for $10,000.
He told CBS News that, in the end, the organ broker only paid half the agreed upon price, disappeared and disconnected the phone line they had been communicating on. What’s more, Abdullah says he was given no after care and is often in pain.
Continue to article: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/desperate-syrian-refugees-selling-organs-to-survive/
