Thailand and Georgia said they are investigating a human trafficking ring that a Thai non-governmental organisation says is engaged in harvesting human eggs of Thai women brought to the South Caucasus country.
Georgia’s interior ministry said on Thursday it had repatriated three Thai women who it said had been working as surrogate mothers in the country. It said four foreign nationals had been questioned as part of the inquiry.
Georgia does not have specific laws regarding surrogacy. However, companies operating there advertise their services and surrogacy arrangements are considered legal contracts. The Georgia government has stated it is in the process of declaring it illegal.
Surapan Thaiprasert, commander of the Foreign Affairs Division of the Royal Thai Police, told Reuters on Friday that Thai authorities were investigating.
One of the victims spoke at a press conference in Thailand this week, without disclosing her name and wearing a face mask and hat.
She said she had responded to a social media advertisement for surrogate mothers who would live with families and be paid 25,000 baht a month. She said that after agreeing, she was brought to Georgia, via Dubai and Armenia, where two Chinese nationals escorted her to a house.
“They took us to a house where there were 60 to 70 Thai women. The women there told us there was no (surrogacy) contracts or parents,” she said.
The women, she said, “would be injected to get treatment, anaesthetised and their eggs would be extracted with a machine. After we got this information and it was not the same as the advertisement, we got scared. We tried to contact people back home.”
The women at the press conference said they had feigned illness to appear weak to avoid having their eggs harvested. They also said that their passports had been taken and they were told by their captors that they risked arrest in Thailand if they returned home.
The Pavena Hongsakul Foundation for Children and Women, which helped return the three women, said it estimated that around 100 more trafficked women remained in Georgia.
Ms Pavena said she had learned about the operation from another woman who had been released and returned to Thailand in September, only after paying the gang about 70,000 baht.