In China’s Uyghur region, a massive expansion of transplant hospitals threatens to entrench allegations of forced organ harvesting from persecuted minorities. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in villages across Bangladesh and India, brokers prey on the poorest people, forging documents and bribing officials to feed an illicit trade in human kidneys. In both regions, vulnerable individuals are being exploited to feed a chilling, and growing, global industry.
No consent, no choice: China’s plan to expand forced organ harvesting
China’s National Health Commission announced in December 2024 that it will build six new transplant hospitals in the Uyghur region by 2030, tripling the region’s capacity. The plan, titled Plan for the Establishment of Human Organ Transplant Hospitals in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (2024–2030), aims to equip hospitals to perform transplants of “hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys and pancreas.”
According to the Daily Mail, the region’s voluntary organ donation rate is only 0.69 donors per million people, far below China’s national average of 4.6. Rights experts say this gap cannot justify such expansion unless it relies on prisoners of conscience.
“This massive expansion in Xinjiang, a region already under scrutiny for systematic repression, raises deeply troubling questions about where the organs will come from,” warned Professor Wendy Rogers of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC).
David Matas, a human rights lawyer, added: “The concept of informed, voluntary consent is meaningless in Xinjiang’s carceral environment.”
One haunting example is Cheng Pei Ming, a Falun Gong practitioner whom authorities forcibly operated on after he refused to sign consent forms. He “awoke with a massive incision down the left side of his chest” and scans confirmed parts of his liver and lung were removed. While China claimed in 2015 to stop using organs from executed prisoners, no legal reform has banned harvesting from prisoners of conscience. As Dr Maya Mitalipova put it:
“This could be industrial-scale organ harvesting under a state-controlled system.”
“The lack of legal safeguards, the history of abuse, and the ongoing repression in Xinjiang all point to the urgent need for independent scrutiny,” Mitalipova said.
A hidden trade across South Asia
And it’s not just in China. Across the world, forced organ trafficking is a growing and global crisis. “The village of one kidney” is the grim nickname of a village in rural Bangladesh. This village is another region that has fallen victim to the growing market that forcibly harvests human organs for profit.
Safiruddin, sold his kidney for 350,000 taka ($2,850), hoping to build a better life for his family. Brokers made it sound easy—just a short trip, quick paperwork, no risk. But today, the money is gone, and the pain constant. The brokers who arranged everything—travel, forged documents, fake family ties—vanished with his passport and his hopes for the future.
According to Al Jazeera, by law, India only allows kidney donations between close relatives or with special approval. But traffickers routinely forge identities and family trees to bypass rules. “They change names, falsify IDs, bribe notaries — everything looks legal on paper,” says Monir Moniruzzaman, a WHO expert researching South Asian organ trafficking.
British Medical Journal estimated that one in 35 adults in the region has sold a kidney. Debts, poverty, and the false promise of jobs that never come often drive people to sell their organs. And brokers prey on this desperation.
Additionally, Moniruzzaman told Al Jazeera that Indian hospitals also have a financial incentive to overlook discrepancies or faulsified in documents.
“Hospitals turn a blind eye because organ donation [in general] is legal. More transplants mean more revenue. Even when cases of fraud surface, hospitals deny responsibility, insisting that documentation appears legitimate. This pattern allows the trade to continue unchecked.”
A global demand for action
From state-backed harvesting in the Uyghur region to hidden trafficking networks in South Asia, these stories reveal the same urgent truth. Forced organ harvesting and trafficking thrive wherever profit, exploitation, and a lack of accountability meet.
Both cases show that the international community must demand independent investigations, stronger safeguards, and accountability at every level. Whether confronting systematic abuses by powerful states or tackling the corruption that lets traffickers prey on the world’s poorest communities.
Ending forced organ harvesting and organ trafficking everywhere means addressing the roots of exploitation, demanding transparency from the institutions meant to protect, such as governments and hospitals. Take action today!
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