By Kristina Rich Dec 22, 2008, 1:08 GMT
Medan, Indonesia - The middleman looks into the juice bar with a frown on his face, then leans over the grubby plastic table and whispers, 'I can take you to him - right now.' There is smoke on his breath.
It is shortly before midnight in the Annika Juice bar just outside the village of Galang, an hour's drive from Indonesia's third largest city of Medan.
With thanks, we decline the prospect of plunging into the nefarious underworld of the mafia organ traffickers at night.
'Be careful. Trust no-one,' the middleman rasps as he leaves.
The search has been prompted by a young man who donated part of his liver five years ago, thereby setting off the trade in organs in Galang.
The village hit the headlines in the summer when Singaporean department store tycoon Tang Wee Sung, suffering from a serious kidney disease, wanted to buy a kidney from a peasant boy in the area.
The deal was exposed the night before the operation and fell through.
It emerged that many people have sold their organs in Galang.
The inhabitants of the village are now suspicious of strangers asking about organ donors.
'Never heard of it,' a man in a streetside cookshop said.
'Not here. You would have to go through a middleman in Medan,' another man said.
It quickly becomes evident that there are people who pull the strings behind the trade in organs.
Those strings come together in Medan, where we find a businessman known for his charitable works who officially makes his money from tankers, but unofficially from gambling dens.
Everyone who hears his name mutters 'mafia' with a hand over their mouths.
The businessman runs a youth organization that his its tentacles, namely members, in every village in the province.
Since the Galang connection in the failed deal with the Singaporean tycoon became public, people have been told to keep quiet as the banned trade in organs can only flourish in secret.
Worker Sulaiman Damanik, 26, wanted to escape from poverty by selling his kidney to Tang.
He was due to receive 150 million rupiahs (13,000 dollars) for his kidney, more than he could ever earn in his lifetime.
Sulaiman did not know that the organ recipient was going to pay 200,000 dollars.
His friend Toni sold his kidney for 20,000 dollars and now has it made.
The deal was simple: he had to make an ethics commission in Singapore believe that he was related to Tang and that he would receive no money for the donation.
According to the court documents, Sulaiman told the commission on June 17, 'I confirm that the brother-in-law of the daughter of Tang's sister married my mother's sister.'
The commission had given the donation the green light, but it went awry. Sulaiman received a jail sentence of two weeks, while Toni received three-and-a-half months for acting as Sulaiman's middleman.
Ailing Tang was also sentenced, paying a 11,000-dollar fine and spending three hours in jail out of consideration for his ill health.
Galang is now silent as the grave, apart for the fame of the once penniless liver donor who set the organ trade rolling and now owns a five-hectare palm-oil plantation.
Curious visitors are given short shrift in the village, but the man in question lets himself be tracked down even in daylight.
'I did it out of charity,' Salimun says candidly.
No money changed hands, and the organ recipient treated him like an adoptive son, Salimun said.
The piece of liver extended the recipient's life by two years, but he has since died.
Salimun said he had gone off the rails, even spending some time in prison for robbery, before he got the 'offer' of becoming an organ donor.
'It changed my life,' he said. 'Today, I am contented.'
Salimun drinks a lot of coffee, smokes a lot and is too shy to show his scar.
It was different a couple of months ago when he freely lifted his T-shirt for the cameras and admitted that he had received 32,000 dollars for the piece of his liver.
A Singaporean newspaper tracked down a mediator who had approached specific villagers, three of whom had already had blood tests.
Salimun said he did not know that the recipient of the part of his liver was a big name in the Medan businessman and mafia boss's 'youth organization' and that he was one of the boss's closest friends.
When the businessman saw that his friend was in need, the idea of the lucrative organ trade came to him, people in Medan said.
Donor kidneys are sought worldwide.
India was a donor's paradise for the rich who bought kidneys from poor Indians. China was also a Mecca for the desperate: human rights groups say the organs of people on death row were sold off.
The sale of organs has now been banned in China since 2006, and in Singapore, Indonesia and the rest of the world - except Iran, according to a recent report in the Economist magazine.
The trade has now gone underground and is flourishing.
That will change in Singapore in the new year, when organ donors would be allowed to receive financial remuneration.
'Criminalizing the trade in organs will not eradicate it,' Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said in parliament in July. 'It only creates a black market where middlemen pocket most of what grateful recipients are willing to pay.'
The minister said compensation was in order as long as the amount was not so high that it was a deciding factor in the organ donation.
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