Sinister ASEAN: Trading in human organs

A week ago, Malaysians were shocked with news of the gruesome death of 11-year old Cambodian girl Siti Masyitah Ibrahim. The girl had been missing since 30 January, and her body was found a mere three kilometres away from her home. Her hands had been tied behind her back, she had been decapitated, and – perhaps most sinister of all - some of her internal organs had been removed.

The ASEAN Post would like to make it clear from the beginning of this article that Malaysian police have denied any elements of organ harvesting and have stated that there was, instead, a possibility that the body's condition was caused by wild animals and possibly exposure. The police also suspect revenge as a possible motive for the child’s murder.

China, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand are destinations from neighboring countries. Within Southeast Asia, Thailand is the leading destination for trafficking

Over half of the world’s slaves are in India, which is roughly 15 million men, women and children in bondage in the world’s largest democracy, and less than two in five human trafficking cases end in conviction. In neighboring Pakistan, there is no meaningful legislation on human trafficking

At least 300,000 children across India are drugged, beaten and forced to beg every day, in what has become a multimillion-rupee industry controlled by human trafficking cartels

Children are sometimes maimed or burned to elicit greater sympathy and get more alms, said the report

The 10 countries with the largest estimated absolute numbers of people in modern slavery include some of the world’s most populous.30 Collectively, these 10 countries – India, China, Pakistan, North Korea, Nigeria, Iran, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia, and the Philippines

when our assessment of government responses is correlated against GDP (PPP) per capita, we find that some highly developed, high-income countries have taken limited action to respond to modern slavery. Countries including Qatar, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have taken limited action despite high levels of resources