Thai women rescued from human-egg farm in Georgia

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Unabashedly posting here for traffic:

Thai women rescued from human-egg farm in Georgia

Three Thai women have been rescued after being lured into a human-egg harvesting scheme operated by Chinese gangsters in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The effort to free them was prompted by Pavena Hongsakula, founder of the Pavena Foundation for Children and Women.
Ms Pavena said she learned about it from another woman victim who had been released and returned to Thailand in September only after paying the gang about 70,000 baht.

The victim told Ms Pavena other Thais were still trapped at the human-egg farm because they had no money to pay for their freedom.
Foreign Affairs police, a division led by Pol Maj Gen Surapan Thaiprasert, coordinated with Interpol and were able to help three other women return to Thailand on Jan 30, she said.

Speaking to media by a livestream on the foundation's Facebook page on Monday, one of the victims said she saw a job advertisement on Facebook promising an income of 400,000 to 600,000 baht.
She contacted the page and was told the job was being a surrogate mother for couples who could not have children in Georgia, and that it was legal there. The employer had paid for her passport application and other travel expenses, the woman said.
She and about 10 others travelled to Georgia in August, led by a Thai woman who was believed to work for the gang. On arrival, they were taken to an area where there were four large houses and at least 100 Thai women already living there.

The place was operated by Chinese gangsters and it turned out that no couples applied there for a surrogate mother, she said.

Instead, they were given hormones to stimulate their ovaries. Once a month the women were anaesthetised and their eggs collected, she said. Some of the women had not been paid at all.

The collected eggs were believed to be sold, trafficked in other countries for use in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), Ms Pavena said.
Police said the investigation is continuing and there could be other rescues.
According to the Pavena Foundation's records, 257 Thais fell victim to human traffickers in 2024, of which 53 were found in Thailand and 204 in other countries. The foundation helped rescue 152 of them.
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.

Fucks sake. I've ballsed up the title and can't fix it. Sorry.

We can't do anything, that's the issue.

Girls from places like Isan are groomed by their fathers and uncles and then sent to BKK and other places to work in massage parlours or to be bar girls.

The girls that want to avoid this look for other solutions and unfortunately they are taken in by the promise of big money.

It is slowly changing, the last 5 years BKK has cleaned up a little bit, but it is the way things are here. Pattaya is becoming more inundated with this stuff because they are trying to make BKK look better and so are pushing it to other places.

But there's also a LOT of women being trafficked TO Thailand, particularly young African and Eastern European girls.

There is absolutely nothing we can do on the Thai end. The only thing we can do is put pressure on the UK/Europe side of things.

The minimum wage here is around £240 a month but the reality is that housekeepers and maids are often paid far less as their employers are providing accommodation.

In reality maids rooms are tiny, not air-conditioned and of a far lower standard than the rest of the house or condo.
We use our maids room for our cat litter tray and to store suitcases. I wouldnt put a human in it.

But these conditions mean that sex work is appealing as they can earn far more and potentially find a western man who will marry them. It is very difficult for a foreigner to buy land or a house here, so the men will marry a Thai woman and put it in her name, hoping she will be honest.

It's the best case scenario for these women and the end goal.

Its a systemic and cultural issue that has been going on forever, quite frankly due to the disgustingness of men.

Awful for the women

BUT where did all the harvested eggs end up going? - to unsuspecting people dear me.

To clinics in Eastern Europe probably.

@NoctuaAthene I think the financial support would have to be very limited otherwise as you say it turns into a surrogacy situation again so it would have to be limited to medical costs and income protection rather than compensation. I think in the US adoption is more common through private agencies, I admit much of my knowledge here comes from TV shows but it certainly seems to be more the norm there, maybe just certain states.

I was adopted in Ireland in the 70s where termination wasn't an option so it was either become a parent or give a baby for adoption. Sadly the system was cruel to mothers and was all about shame and sin, very cloak and dagger, but in theory it worked so in theory a more positive version could work again. It would have to involve a 3rd option for unplanned mothers with lots of emotional support. All that can be done is a system established, what women chose to do after that is up to them. But i think there would be a percent of people, perhaps a small number that would prefer this to termination either on religious/ moral grounds or because they are too far along when they realise they are pregnant. It's just a thought.. i don't have the answers!

Thanks for replying to me and engaging! Voluntary adoption (as opposed to court enforced) is more common in America I believe, but I think that's (a) because religious opposition to abortion is much more prevalent, abortion is banned or heavily frowned upon in more places (b) absolute poverty is more widespread, not saying poor single mothers in the UK have it easy whatsoever but in some parts of the USA the deprivation is on another level entirely, meaning you can see why some mothers do face a really desperate choice (c) prospective parents are allowed to make quite substantial financial payments to the birth mothers, I think exact laws vary state by state and I don't think it is allowed to be a straight-up payment for a baby anywhere, but I have seen examples for instance of adoption agencies advertising payment of college fees for birth mothers which I think is tantamount to or even worse than commercial surrogacy personally. I don't think introducing any of this to the UK/EU would be a step forward even if it did result in more voluntary/open/'humane' adoptions and fewer surrogacy or donor situations.

Equally I'm sorry to hear about your own family, but I don't think it was the (relative) lack of stigma around having your baby adopted if you were unmarried and pregnancy in 70s Ireland that made that system 'work' if indeed it can be said to have worked, for all the sad reasons you mention. Surely what was behind that system was the enormous social and religious taboo around sex before marriage and therefore single/unmarried motherhood that gave those poor women no other choice, I'm struggling to see what a more positive version of that would look like? A certificate for the birth mother? A ceremony thanking them for their service? Seems far too trivial/tokenistic to me. Surely without something with some tangible value i.e. money, no-one is going to put themselves through that even if all the practicalities are totally easy and you're very well treated and looked after before/during/after? I can only see it really happening in the sorts of circumstances where people already agree to be an altruistic surrogate e.g. giving their baby to a family member or very close friend, but then aren't there going to be all the same issues we already see and discuss with surrogacy (and presumably if we're talking accidental pregnancy there's also the father to then consider and bring into the picture which isn't usually an issue with surrogacy at least)?

As it happens in the UK there is a legal mechanism/scheme to give up your baby for adoption if you want to, including a more 'open' type of adoption with at least some ongoing contact between the birth mother and the child and their adopted family. You're right, it's not very well utilized at all (vanishingly rare in fact) and I guess it is so unusual as a choice that it probably would seem to someone trying to use it that there were lots of barriers and stigma, but that's because the vast, vast majority of women who choose to carry a baby to term do then want to go to raise that baby themselves and really just need support to do so (whether that's practical, financial, mental health/health care). I think TBH if we're talking on a population level about reducing stigma and helping people who want to have babies but can't, that's the group we should be looking at first, i.e. poor/deprived/ill people who either choose not to have children at all because they can't give them the life they want, or do have children and go on to struggle and not get the right support, with all the attendant social and societal problems that causes. Rather than putting resources into somehow persuading people to give away their babies to better off people, that smacks of social engineering to me (sorry!). Like I say I am desperately sorry for anyone that wants a baby and can't have one for whatever reason (been there myself in fact) and in a world where gamete/embryo donation and surrogacy are scientifically possible and indeed morally and ethically OK in some circumstances, I don't have the answers to how it should all be regulated. I also do think adoption has a place in society, I wouldn't want to demonise or outlaw it, but I'm not sure I'd be a personal advocate of increasing adoption rates at all...

Thank you for laying it out so starkly. Patriarchy is a fucking scourge, and it is as the root of all hell for women and girls.

We westerners don't know how lucky we are.

I'm glad you posted here. I might have minded this otherwise.

Ew. How Handmaid's Tale. These poor women. And it would traumatise me not knowing where my eggs had gone.

Realistically there's going to be very few western women benefitting from this specific situation. They're using Thai women's eggs, the babies will need to be believable as the biological child as its being done illegally and so not viable to be used on a large scale by western women. This sounds more likely to be being ran in the US with an Asia based client base. It would probably be seen as safer to use the US criminals than a local branch where connections are easier to be made.

100000% this. It will only be useful for demographics overseas where there is a wealthy contingent similar to those the eggs were stolen from. America is the main target.

It's always fucking America.

Plenty of women from the UK go to Europe for anonymous donor egg treatment though, in less well regulated countries, and while the eggs may not have been “farmed” as such, they may still have been obtained in ways not 100% ethical.