Dozens of women have been kept hostage by a Chinese gang and forced into human egg harvesting in Georgia, it has been claimed.
As many as 100 victims were found in a ‘four-house compound’ in Tbilisi after allegedly being trafficked from Thailand and through Armenia.
One woman, identified only as Na, said that upon arriving, she was put in a house with 60 other Thai women – many of whom were in poor health.
Na told the Thai online newspaper The Nation she was later moved to a second accommodation, where she was living with 10 other women.
She said she believed that ‘around 100 Thai women were trapped across the four houses’.
It was last week that the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs launched an investigation into the alleged human trafficking charges.
Officers searched multiple locations, locating and interviewing up to 70 foreign citizens.
Three Thai women among them were desperate to leave as they no longer wanted to be surrogates and stay at their residential address.
They were transferred to a shelter for victims of human trafficking on the same day and were later returned to their homeland.
Police also questioned four foreign citizens who brought Thai women to Georgia for surrogacy.
Many of the women were unaware that the process was for egg harvesting, and not surrogacy.
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Belle, one of the women brought over from Thailand, told the BBC she asked her boss to return to Thailand.
She told him: ‘You said it was a surrogate mothering job. You said you came and signed a contract.
‘But he said if I wanted to go back, I had to find 60,000-70,000 baht to redeem myself and then I could go home. Or I had to sell my eggs to pay off my debts three times.’
Authorities are continuing to investigate.
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