‘The whole country is doing it’: how illegal kidney traders target Pakistan’s desperate brick kiln workers

‘I had to marry my daughter and my son and that meant the debt got bigger. The brick kiln owner was threatening me. He used to beat me, and so we decided to sell a part of my body to escape.’ All photographs by Pete Pattisson Photograph: Pete Pattisson

Shafeeq Masih* faced an impossible choice: remain trapped for ever by the debt he owed to the owner of the brick kiln where he worked, just outside the Pakistani city of Lahore, or try to pay it off by selling the only thing he had of any value: one of his kidneys.

The brick kiln owner was harassing him to repay the debt, which he claimed stood at 900,000 rupees (£2,420), but however hard he worked, it just kept growing. Masih knew the owner was fiddling the books but says, “whatever they put in writing, we can’t question that. They see us as slaves. We just have to obey.”