Kotzias uncovered a network of government officials, doctors and organ buyers, all of whom facilitate and profit from illegal organ trafficking.
Some 93 cases were sent for prosecution that involved Greek diplomats issuing visas to unaccompanied children in order to facilitate illegal removal of their organs, “but the press did not write about them,” says Kotzias.
These diplomats have all been jailed. “The fact that I saved a few souls will make me sleep quietly when my life is over,” Kotzias said.
There are currently 3 050 unaccompanied children in Greece, and almost half of them, some 1 272, are either homeless, or they live in a non-permanent residence or in an unknown location, according to the newspaper Kathimerini. They all potentially face the risks of sexual exploitation and illicit organ removal.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has noted that “The Trafficking in Persons Protocol states that if the victim is a child, that is a person below the age of 18, consent is irrelevant regardless of whether any improper means (such as deception, force, abuse of a position of vulnerability) have been used”.
Kotzias exposed illegal trafficking of organs from children in Greece in October 2018. “We sent 93 cases to the Prosecutor, highly evaluated ambassadors went to jail, but the press did not write about them. Because the person who gives a visa in Constantinople [Istanbul] to an unaccompanied child is not just a criminal, he is traitor. A visa for a 14-month-old unaccompanied baby and they tried to cover it up for him.”
Thousands of unaccompanied children in Greece have illegally entered the country, while government and EU authorities pay little attention to them. In fact, most of the international community and political leaders of the EU pretend it does not exist.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, in 2011, “it was estimated that the illicit ‘organ trade’ generated illegal profits between USD 600 million and USD 1.2 billion per year.
“Underground ‘organ markets’ present a significant threat to the security of national organ donation systems, eroding the image of transplantation and public confidence in organ transplantation worldwide.
“… Current research also illustrates the involvement of organized networks that bring together willing recipients and their ‘suppliers’. Today, such organized networks have been reportedly uncovered in various regions of the world, including the Middle East, Southern Africa and South East Europe.
“…Trafficking in children for organ removal only requires that there is an act (recruitment, transport, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child) for the purpose of exploitation through organ removal.
“…The Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (2000) to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), requires States parties to prohibit, in the context of sale of children, offering, delivering or accepting, by whatever means, a child for the purpose of transfer of organs of the child for profit.”
Kotzias, incidentally, is not a conservative, but an avid globalist, and he is considered by many “an insider”.
The supposedly humanitarian face of European hospitality to immigrants and refugees has a dark side, one in which profit from people-smuggling is the main focus. Part of the migration effort, evidently, is about money, and not about helping foreigners in need.
