In the wake of a kidney selling case revealed last week, a top official at the National Police has warned of organized crime in organ sales.
The selling of human organs amounted to organized crime as declared in the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN GIFT), the National Police's general crimes chief Comr. Gen. Anang Iskandar said, as reported by kompas.com.
UN GIFT categorizes the crime in three different modus operandi, he explained. In the first case, the perpetrator tricks his victim into giving their organs. In the second modus operandi, the victim agrees to sell their organs, but is not paid according to the agreement. In the third case, the perpetrator treats the victims as if they are sick, while they are not, and then takes the organs out without the victim's consent.
UN GIFT has established international standard protocols, including recommendations on prevention and punishment, for law enforcement authorities to handle organ sales.
World Health Organization guidelines are another point of reference. The WHO had declared the commercialization of humans organs a human rights violation, Anang said.
"The [Council of Europe's] Additional Protocol to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine also prohibits organ sales and urges countries to impose sanctions on the crime," he said as quoted by kompas.com.
National Police investigators arrested three alleged organ sellers last week. Yana Priatna aka Amang, Dedi Supriadi bin Oman Rahman and Kwok Herry Susanto aka Herry were apparently trying to sell kidneys.
Herry was allegedly tasked with finding clients in need of a kidney transplantation, while Yana and Dedi would search for people willing to sell their kidneys.
They are suspected of defrauding at least 15 people whose kidneys they had sold and charged under the Human Trafficking Law and Health Law.
Police were still expanding their investigation into the case and suspected individuals, doctors and management officials from three Jakarta hospitals to be involved, National Police investigator Sr. Comr. Umar Surya Fana said, without providing details on the hospitals except that one was a public hospital while the other two were private. (rin)(+)
