Desperate Myanmar citizens are travelling to India to sell their organs, CNN reports. This alarming trend is driven by extreme poverty and the threat of famine in Myanmar.
Maung Maung, who spoke to CNN in 2022, decided to sell his kidney after his family faced severe food shortages. His family fell into debt after the junta detained and tortured him. “I felt life was very hard,” Maung says. “There was no other way to survive than to rob or kill people for money.”
Maung, who sold his kidney in July 2023, received 10 million Burmese kyats ($3,079). While this amount is almost double the average annual income of urban households in Myanmar, it is much lower than the cost of a kidney on the black market, which can reach $120,000, according to a 2021 study.
Maung’s case is part of a broader trend. Many people in Myanmar sell organs through Facebook and other channels, often with the help of brokers who facilitate these illegal transactions. Facebook has removed some of these organ trafficking groups, but has not provided comment on them.
In India, organ donation is limited by law to relatives. Agents falsify documents to circumvent these rules. The Myanmar Embassy in New Delhi is verifying these documents in an attempt to curb the illegal trade.
A 26-year-old woman who also sold her kidney told CNN: “No one wants to sell part of their body. I do it because I have no other choice.” She was forced to work in a garment factory for meager wages and was seeking funds to help her aunt who had cancer.
An anonymous buyer shared her experience. She circumvented legal restrictions by marrying an organ donor. She paid 12 million kyats ($3,695) and said: “We had to make up our stories for weeks. They know we are lying but they don’t pay attention to the warning signs.”
An organ trafficking source said the Myanmar embassy is aware of the document forgery but remains passive.
Meanwhile, Myanmar is facing a severe economic crisis, with the value of the kyat plummeting and inflation soaring. According to the World Bank, the country’s poverty rate has reached its highest level in six years and economic growth has stagnated at 1%. “This is chaos entirely caused by the regime’s economic policies,” says analyst David Matheson.
The junta’s crackdown, which included arrests and currency interventions, has worsened the crisis. Prices for basic necessities, including food and medicine, have risen sharply. “Transportation costs have doubled or tripled,” says a grocery store owner. The national unity government has criticized the military for lacking a coherent economic strategy, worsening the country’s unrest.
Previously, Cursor wrote that the Briton with the largest penis in the world made a confession about the difficulties of his life.
