BEIRUT — Lebanon has long been known for unrepentant, sometimes shocking you-can-get-anything-you-want commercialism. But there is a business thriving here now that turns the stomach. As Syrian refugees have poured across the border—they now number 1.3 million in a country whose population previously was 4.5 million—human vultures have closed in on them.
These war profiteers are looking for bits and pieces of people, a kidney here, a cornea there, which can be sold to desperate clients coming from as far away as Finland and Venezuela.
Who are these middlemen? Their victims do not want to say. Where are the surgeries performed? Another closely guarded secret, and not only here in Lebanon.
The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) defines the illicit trade in organs around the world as “an organized crime involving a host of offenders”:
“The recruiter who identifies the vulnerable person, the transporter, the staff of the hospital/clinic and other medical centers, the medical professionals, the middlemen and contractors, the buyers, the banks where organs are stored, are all involved in the racket,” according to UN.GIFT. “It is a fact that the entire racket is rarely exposed and therefore the dimensions are yet to be appropriately fathomed.”
Undoubtedly that is true. But the scars on the men and women I met testify eloquently to their victimization.
All were tempted by the money—usually more than $10,000—but not all received it, and each one has his or her own distinctive tale of misery.
A 37-year-old laborer we’ll call Jaul, seen at left, wanted to buy the bronchodilators and anti-inflammatory medicines needed to treat his 5-year-old daughter’s asthma, but he did not begin to have enough money, so he sold one of his corneas for $9,000. He should have quit smoking, which would have helped her, but tobacco is a pervasive addiction and rare pleasure, and it is even used for makeshift therapies. —Bill Kotsasos
Jaul’s friend N’bal fled to Lebanon with her 12-year-old daughter, who has cerebral palsy. When she doesn’t have enough money to buy medicines like Valium she allows the little girl to smoke because, she says, it calms her nerves and muscles.
Bill Kotsatos/Redux
A woman who calls herself Mu’azzaz says she sold her kidney for money to bribe Syrian officials and get her husband out of jail. But soon after he was freed, he married another woman. Mu’azzaz, 37 years old and a single mother of two teenage boys, had been given $13,000 for the kidney. But the bribe was paid and now the money is gone and she is searching for a home and a husband. She says her health is OK. Her remaining kidney is functioning normally. But her heart, she says, is broken.
Mu'azzaz shows her scar.
Bill Kotsatos/Redux
“Kalila,” a 39-year-old married mother of four whose husband is unemployed, says she sold her kidney to her sister-in-law for $15,000. She feels that she is fully recovered from the procedure, she says, but advises people against selling organs or tissue.
Kallila shows her scar.
“Qutb,” a 57-year-old refugee, was promised $10,000 for one of his kidneys, but after the anesthetic from the surgery wore off, the middleman who coordinated the deal between Qutb and his kidney’s recipient told him that he would instead be paid with a patch of rent-free land on which he could build a home. Of course, he had no money to construct a real house, and he holds no title to the land, so he lives now in a shanty made of wood scraps and plastic. He cannot afford the medicines he was prescribed, and he says he doesn’t have the money for a follow-up visit with a doctor.
One of Qutb’s nieces, inspired by his kidney sale, wants to sell one of her own. Qutb forbids her, he said, and would dissuade anyone else from doing so.
Qutb lives with 13 members of his family and extended relatives.
Bill Kotsatos/Redux
A veteran construction worker from Syria, 60-year-old “Talib,” plied his trade whenever possible in Lebanon for most of 2012. But work, more often than not, went to younger men. Having exhausted all options, Talib visited a regional hospital and inquired about selling a kidney. Today he has difficulty moving about and says he regrets his decision.
Bill Kotsatos/Redux
