Three women were trafficked from Thailand to a farm in Georgia, Eastern Europe, where they were given hormones and forced to have eggs extracted, as authorities investigate the horrifying claims
The plight of women being enslaved on a sick human egg farm has come to light after three managed to escape.
Female prisoners were treated like animals and fed hormones by a trafficking ring in the country of Georgia, with their egg cells sold on the black market. The twisted news emerged after three Thai women enslaved on the farm over six months were freed on Thursday last week.
They claimed they became entrapped on the farm after responding to an advert for a surrogacy job on Facebook. The women said they assumed this would mean acting as surrogates for women in the Eastern European country, and were promised wages of between 11,500 and 17,000 Euros (£9,600 to £14,000).
All three accepted the offers, travelling from Thailand to Georgia along with several others in August last year, a press conference heard. Arriving in the country, the women were horrified to be housed along with around 100 others.
They claimed that on the dystopian farm, criminals force-administered them with hormones to stimulate their ovaries, before anaesthetising them once a month and removing their egg cells. It’s thought the cells were sold to people wanting children on the black market.
None of the three women enslaved were paid, and said they had to pay 2,000 Euros (£1,665) for their freedom. They managed to escape after one previous escapee alerted a charity back in Thailand, who helped them pay for their freedom.
In the conference on Friday, one of the women spoke of her ordeal, as both Thai and Georgia authorities have confirmed they were investigating the horrifying claims. She told how she had responded to an advert on social media looking for willing surrogates, with the offer of being paid 25,000 Thai baht (£600) a month.
“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,” Bangkok Post reports her as saying. After this, she said women “would be injected to get treatment, anaesthetised and their eggs would be extracted with a machine”.
The women feigned illnesses to avoid having to give eggs each month. They also claimed their captors seized their passports, and that they would risk arrest in Thailand should they return home.
“After we got this information and it was not the same as the advertisement, we got scared. We tried to contact people back home.” Georgia’s interior ministry has confirmed three Thai women were repatriated to their home country and that four foreign nationals were being questioned.
Pavena Hongsakul Foundation for Children and Women said it estimated that around 100 Thai women were being kept on the farm.
