A man and 12 women allegedly involved in smuggling babies-to-order were under arrest in Indonesia on Friday after police moved to shut down a transnational human trafficking operation. File Photo by Mast Irham/EPA-EFE
Indonesian police said Friday that they have broken up a baby-to-order human trafficking ring in West Java that allegedly sold infants for which its members paid as little as $600. All but one of the 13 suspects detained were women.
As many as 25 babies were produced to order and sold to clients, some of them overseas, since the gang began operating in 2023, with police saying in a post on X that they were hunting for three other suspects who remained at large.
West Java police told the BBC they had rescued six babies, all aged about 12 months, who were about to be trafficked from two locations near Jakarta and in West Kalimantan.
Babies were purchased while still in the womb from biological mothers who had been recruited by the gang and trafficked via a network of main agents, caregivers, intermediaries and forgery specialists who created fake birth certificates, family ID cards and passports.
Each suspect performed a specific role in the criminal enterprise, police said.
“Within this network, newborn babies were handed over to intermediaries who were paid between $614 to $978 per baby. The funds were then distributed by suspect A to the biological mother and other perpetrators. Afterward, the babies were cared for by a caregiver named YN, who received a salary of $153 plus an additional $61.41 for the babies’ needs,” a statement said.
Babies aged 2 to 3 months were then sent to Jakarta and subsequently trafficked across the Sea of Java to Pontianak on the island of Borneo “for further processing by other suspects,” according to police.
Once in Pontainak, a suspect police identified only as “AHA” falsified key documents and recruited “fake parents,” who were paid $400 to include babies’ identities in their family cards.
With all the required paperwork and documents in place, were illegally adopted and sent abroad, mostly to Singapore.
West Java Police’s director of general criminal investigation, Surawan, said babies’ nationalities had been switched and that they were urgently trying to track down their passports so that they could find the adoptive “parents” in Singapore and have them arrested.
“We will cross-check the data with the babies who departed, so we know exactly who departed, who accompanied them, when they departed, and who the adopters there are,” he said.
Surawan said their investigation indicated that biological parents handed over their children in return for payment, often because they lacked the financial wherewithal to raise them, but some were “reserved while still in the womb.”
Parents could also face child protection and human trafficking offenses if it were proved they had made an agreement with the trafficking gang.
West Java is one of the poorest regions of Indonesia, with government figures showing more than 3.6 million people living below the poverty line.
Bandung city deputy mayor Erwin, called for tight monitoring by hospital maternity units of mothers immediately after giving birth.
“Security officers must be more vigilant. Procedures for naming babies, assigning identification tags, and monitoring people entering and leaving must also be reviewed,” said Erwin.
However, child protection authorities warned that an abortion ban and conservative social values in the predominantly Muslim nation meant women in desperate straits were easy prey for trafficking gangs.
Indonesian Child Protection Commissioner Ai Rahmayanti said women made pregnant through rape, having suffered a relationship breakup, or simply with an unwanted pregnancy were at risk.
Police stressed the investigation was ongoing, and that they believed the trafficking operation was likely much more extensive than what they had uncovered to date.
