The Fatal Market of Organs
By Xhelal Neziri
On a June evening in 2006, when the 17 years old Trajan Beqirov from a Roman Quart of Skopje left his house to go to a party with his friends, none of his family members had thought he would never return home again.
Trajan had told his father Ezerxhan that he was going out down town for a walk with his friend Orhan Iseni. His parents were aware that he had a girlfriend, therefore his weekends’ nights out were not surprising at all. He would normally come back home by midnight with the last urban bus. But, that night, a phone call from the police has terrified his family members. At about 2.30, a police clerk called the Beqirov family, to tell them to come and pick up their son, without giving any further information of what had happened to him. They were only told to bring some dry clothes, since he was wet.
“When we made it at the station, my son was not there. I was told he had got away during the search made by the police. They recognized that the policemen were suspicious on Trajan and Orhan as being car thieves, therefore they wanted to search them”, explains Ezerxhan, holding his sons photo in his shaking hand.
From this night on, the Beqirov family is being told that their son is counted as missing person. After living in anxiety for seventeen days, this poor family is informed for the fatal end of their son, Trajan. A resident of Trubarevo village, few kilometres from Skopje, had found his dead body in the waters of river Vardar.
“From the first day they lied to me by saying my son was alive…”, said Trajan’s father, declining his head. His face full of wrinkles is suddenly being covered by a flow of tears, which interrupt his narration.
“For seventeen days straight I was told by the police station that my son is alive. And, at the end, they told me he had died. At first they said that the kids had gone away by their will, but his friend Orhan admits that they had been chased by the members of the Police Special Units “Alfa”. They hadn’t been searched, or asked to introduce any documents. While they’ve been beating Trajan, they’ve also hit Orhan in his face”, Ezerxhan says, directing his eyes towards the open window of his house from where voices of young children playing in the streets could be heard.
He hasn’t been answered yet to his many questions he has submitted to the Competent Organs. For example, he says that the Forensics have told him that Trajan didn’t have any sweaters on, whereas the man who found him by the river says he had. Next, he hasn’t been answered yet why he had a 40 – 50 cm ligature on his right leg and in the skull, before he was sent to the Forensics.
“This is a very mysterious death”, the father says by warning the authorities that if he will not get any correct and explicit responds by the spring next year, he will seek for justice in the International Court in Strasbourg. He also admits that Orhan had behaved strangely at the police station. When he was let free from the police, he went home and had frozen the contacts with the Beqirov family.
A few days later, Orhan’s mother told Ezerxhan that her son was calling for Trajan in his dreams and he had continuously whispered that Trajan was detained by “Alfa’s”. Anytime he has been asked about what had really happened to Trajan on that fatal night, Orhan has not spoken at all.
Gjurgjeman, Trajan’s older brother, has even more distrust about the official argumentations.
“My brother was an excellent swimmer. He couldn’t have drowned”, says he.
“The Stolen” Organs
What has astonished the Beqirov family members is actually the results they have received by the state forensic examination of Macedonia. The first examination, performed by the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Skopje, shows that Trajan has died as a result of drowning.
This examination was carried out on the same day his body was found. The Institute office has phoned Ezerxhan’s house to pick up the body immediately, even if it was midnight. Ezerxhan doubted the Institute’s attempts to close the case as soon as possible, therefore he has asked for help on the Helsinki Committee in Skopje. Ezerxhan was interested if the Committee could help him carry out a second examination, performed by some foreign physicians and experts.
The Committee approved his request, and found the Bulgarian expert Georgi Hristov Bankov to carry out the second examination. The results of Bankov, seen by the journalist as well, show that Trajan’s skull was empty. Instead of his brain, the skull was filled with daily newspapers, printed in Macedonia. Besides the brain, his heart and his left kidney were not in his body.
The Bulgarian expert says in his report that he has found blood stains inside the skull, thus he concludes there was a bloodshed in his brain due to beatings. According to Bankov, Trajan was hit with heavy tools that has generated the inner bloodshed. Further, the results show that Trajan’s body has stand for three days on a dry place, and fourteen days in the water.
“I don’t know who has taken my son’s organs. I don’t know if they were sold to someone, and who has bought them. I have been told that those organs have been sent to Colombia, where are bought by citizens of developed countries to transplant them in their bodies”, says Ezerxhan.
He suspects that the whole operation of taking out Trajan’s organs has been performed in the Military Hospital of Skopje, where he was sent after being detained by the police. After taking out his organs, Ezerxhan believes his son’s body was thrown in the river Vardar.
“After the police didn’t tell us where my son was, confidentially we were told that he was sent in the Military Hospital. My son-in-law and some other family members went to look for him, but the gate guard in the Hospital had had an order not to let anyone of Trajan’s family enter the building, however the family members entered the hospital by insisting after the gate guard gave up but the doctors told them that no one with the name Trajan Beqirov was in the Military Hospital, but they didn’t allow them to verify the information given.
The Non-Governmental Organization “Hëna” (the Moon) thinks that this is a case of illegal human organs trafficking, where the Romans are the most often victims. This NGO, the Helsinki Committee and the Association for Democratic Development of Romans “The Sun” from Tetovo, have helped the Beqirov family to pay Dr. Bankov for the examination.
“The examination displayed some new moments, which make us suspect that Trajan’s body has not been in the water for seventeen days. Moreover, where is his brain, and why his skull was filled with newspaper sheets. Where are the vast majority of his organs, such as the kidney, the heart and the liver”, says Muhamed Toçi, the leader of the sector for Human Rights in this organization.
“Hëna” (The Moon) suspects that Trajan’s organs have been exported to different institutions abroad Macedonia, where they’ve been transplanted to patients in need for a certain sum of money.
“Trajan Beqirov’s parents have not been consulted if they would permit the hospital to take and donate Trajan’s organs. According to the Bulgarian expert, for an authentic analysis you do not need the whole organ, because an exemplar of 2-3 cm would be enough. Why the whole organs are missing? Someone else knows the answer, for sure”, says Toçi.
The Romans in the Target of “the Dealers“
The research conducted by SCOOP has shown that the majority of the victims of human organs trafficking are the Romans (gipsies), who due to their difficult economical conditions agree to sell their organs for a certain sum of money. One of the most wanted organs in the market is the kidney. The sale is done via mediators, whereas the buyers are the foreign citizens of the developed countries.
Even though formally this is represented as a “donation” of the organ, the whole process is a criminal act, because it doesn’t happen through the Competent Institutions and there is disrespect of the rules granted by the law for organs transplantation. According to the actual law, only a family member of the patient can donate an organ.
Aside from being in difficult economical conditions, the Romans are “suitable” for the Organ Dealers, since a substantial number of them live in no urbanized neighbourhoods, and are not registered in the evidence of the total number of the citizens, in the Police Stations.
A suchlike neighbourhood has rose in the suburbia of the city of Tetovo, near the Industrial Zone. Surrounded by factories and rubbish dumps, in their improvised houses there are about one thousand of Romans living. Just few of them are registered and possess an identification card or any documents at all. They provide food for their families by collecting and selling used paper to the recycling factories. A big number of them also beg for money in the streets around the city.
When we asked some of them if they had heard of or knew anyone who might have sold a kidney, they nodded their heads in sign of acquaintance, by saying they were familiar with this phenomenon.
“I wouldn’t agree, but there are many of those who have sold an organ. We have people coming and offering money for a kidney. Some of them offer by 15 euros. I would never do that”, says Ilmi, the reeve of the neighbourhood.
He says he has tried to convince his cohabitants not to sell their organs, but he had failed. They didn’t seem to listen to him.
“After doing the medical examinations, they take the donator and send him or her illegally to Albania. After a while, they would return them with cash. The “donators” go and live in some old houses in Skopje afterwards, Ilmi explains.
In this one occasion, the “donator” was brought back dead.
“They took him to take his kidney, but they brought him back dead. They dropped him here and got away. I don’t know if they had taken all the organs”, he says.
He admits he is a victim of the Human Organs Trafficking, but against his will.
“My wife has a problem with her kidneys. She has to go to the hospital very often. Two years ago I sent her in the Skopje Clinics for an examination, and they told me her kidneys do not function properly, therefore they proposed me to donate her one of my kidneys. So I did. After the surgery my wife still had the same problems. I sent her to a specialist physician in Tetovo who told me that my kidney was not transplanted into my wife’s body. Our doctors do not steal only your money, they also steal your organs”, Ilmi says.
The Police Has No Information
The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) in Macedonia says they have no information that the Human Organs Trafficking is blooming in the country.
“We do not have any records of any suchlike criminal act. In the very moment that we will come across with such illegal activity, we will respond vigorously”, says the MIA spokesman, Ivo Kotevski.
He didn’t want to comment about the Beqirov case, and other cases of Romans who were victims of, or directly incriminated in the illegal human organs trafficking.
“The Ministry of Health has created a Coordinator Body for this question. They have performed inspections and they have the details”, Kotevski explains.
The Coordinator Body says that the Inspections performed by the Ministry of Health have not recorded any illegal transplantation of human organs. This body was constituted after the recent report of the American Health Organization, where Macedonia was mentioned in the group of countries where the illegal human organs trafficking was present. According to this organization, Macedonia is the so called “transplantation tourism site” for the rich people, where they are offered kidneys, lungs, the heart membrane and skin.
The European Union Organisation for Organ Transplantation has listed Macedonia among the “organ donator” countries.
The Dealer’s Network
On the other hand, sources in the Ministry of Health, say that there is a Dealer’s Network in Macedonia which deals with human organs trafficking, and it is consist of surgeon-doctors and smugglers, whose duty is to find and prepare the “donators” of the organs, send them in Albania or Greece, where the organs transplantations clinics are located.
“The whole network in the Balkans, and broadly in Europe, is run and controlled by Israeli experts, who also have opened the clinics in Albania and Greece. In different ways, they approach to the patients or their families in the developed countries, to offer them or their loved ones a salvation. These people offer organ donators from India and Pakistan, but the countries of the Balkans are also involved”, the sources say.
According to them, in 2001 and 2002 there was an initiative by Israeli businessmen and surgeons to build an organ transplantation clinics in Macedonia, so the donators would not have to go illegally to Albania or Greece.
“They were very interested to invest in a clinics which would to illegal organs transplantation. The first two clinics had been opened in two neighbouring countries, in 1994. They were interested in building a super modern clinics here too, but we do not know why they never came back”, the sources say.
According to them, apart from the organs transplantation, this network is also trafficking Roman and orphan children from Macedonia, into Greece or Italy. Most of the times, they are used over there as organ donators, where except their kidneys, they are sometimes taken their blood or their heart.
“A male child is sold for about 50 thousand euros, whereas the child’s lung costs about 30 thousand euros. A kidney costs from 20 to 30 thousand euros”, the sources say.
Read the original article published in the newspaper Fakti here:
