Iranians are selling their body organs to make ends meet

Handwritten notes on walls advertising human body parts for sale

Iranians are selling their body organs to make ends meet

Iran, Dec. 4, 2018 - Here’s a sight that has sadly become all too common in Iran: Handwritten notes on walls advertising body parts for sale, complete with blood type, health state, the age of seller and phone number to contact.

This is how Iran’s poor are selling their own health to make ends meet. What makes the situation even more tragic that every day, more of the country’s youth join the ranks of body organ sellers. These are youth who are suffering from the corrupt policies of the ruling regime and resort to desperate measures such as selling kidney, livers, retina…

Outrageously, state-run medical centers and official hospitals and other institutions tied to Iranian officials make stellar profits from intermediating the process of selling body organs of poor people.

Among these institutions is the Association of Kidney Patients and Khomeini Hospital in Tehran, which recently posted an ad for selling body organs. The officials of these medical centers have not denied the involvement.

The buying and selling of body organs has become so common in Tehran that some parts of the city have become quasi-markets for buyers and sellers, and the walls are scribbled with hundreds of handwritten ads.

In this respect, state-run Arman newspaper wrote in November, “If you go by Valiasr Square in front of the Justice Ministry Palace, there’s an alley that turned into a market for the selling of kidney. In recent years, anyone who wants to buy or sell kidneys goes to that alley. In the past year, in addition to kidneys, ads for the sale of liver and retina are also appearing on walls. The sale of body organs has turned into a popular method to solve poverty in circumstances where economic problems have bent the back of society.”

One of the kidney sellers told Arman, “My son has a rare disease. Specialists are giving differing views on his illness and no one knows what’s my son’s problem… Last month, I sold my kidney. The merchant took half of the money. Now I want to sell part of my liver to pay for the costs of my son’s treatment.”

Others are selling their body parts simply to put food on their families’ tables.

“I separated from my husband and I now reside in one of the fringe parts of Zahedan. We are doing anything to pay for our expenses. We want to sell our kidney and hope to be able to use the income to buy a store to ensure the future of our children,” a woman from Zahedan, Baluchistan province, told Shiite News, another state-run news website.

These are just examples of what’s happening in every corner of Iran.

Iranian regime officials are openly inviting and endorsing the sale of body organs. “What’s wrong with a person in poverty to change their life by [selling their body parts] and earning 200 to 300 million rials?” Hossein Ali Shahriari, the chairman of the Health Commission in the Iranian regime’s parliament, said, as quoted by the state-run Bahar news website in March 2017.

While this Iranian regime authority shamelessly justifies the selling of body organs, he doesn’t admit that it is the corruption of his regime that has driven the lives of the people into poverty and misery and has forced them to sell their body organs.

The regime has not only forced the poor people of Iran to sell their body organs, but it has also turned it into a lucrative business for its official medical centers such as Khomeini hospital and the Association of Kidney Patients.

The selling of body organs has become so common that its dealers have created digital marketplaces to facilitate buying and selling.

“Dealers of body organs are busy doing inhumane activities and have turned Instagram to their online markets,” wrote Shafaf, a state-run news outlet, in October.

Indeed, the selling of body organs by the poor and the formation of gangs of traffickers is the direct result of four decades of corruption by the Iranian regime and the squandering of the wealth of the Iranian people on terrorism and meddling in foreign countries. While 96 percent of the Iranian population is struggling to live a decent life, the ruling elite is enjoying every possible luxury in their lives.

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