When the Irene Fernandez trial concluded last Thursday, one major concern emerging from the seven-year criminal prosecution case was the line of questioning the public prosecutors took on the issue of research principles and ethics.

It became apparent that 'personal knowledge', according to the prosecutors, was required for Fernandez's research and analysis to hold up in the 'false news' trial.

The entire research procedure of Fernandez and her team was questioned, firstly on the basis that they were not 'experts' in addressing the health issues faced by migrants, and secondly that no researcher had first hand experience inside the camps.

At the conclusion of her trial - dubbed the longest trial in Malaysian legal history - Fernandez was found guilty and sentenced to 12 months' jail for publishing 'false news' contained in a memorandum entitled 'Abuse, Torture and Dehumanised Treatment of Migrant Workers at the Detention Camps'.

The memorandum, said Fernandez, was the result of what started in 1993 as research into HIV/Aids prevalence among migrant workers, and later broadened during in-depth interviews to include other concerns beyond purely health-related ones.

Rank by priority

Fernandez said the methodology employed by her team required that researchers take action to intervene and provide support as and when issues crop up and reflect a consistent pattern among migrant workers.

"During the course of our research," she explained, "we would have general discussion on main concerns of the migrants, and we asked them to rank this by priority."

"It emerged that health was an issue of fourth importance," said Fernandez.

And their first concern?

"The issue of arrests and detention. Second was job security, and third was the concern that their passports were kept by their employers," she said.

All three are interlinked issues, as the validity of their working visa is tied to the employer who hires them before they arrive in the country.

Malaysian policy requires that employers hold the passports of their workers. As such, additional security, one that is beyond contractual is provided for employers, but for foreign employees the entire process signals entrapment, a loss of rights, and opportunity for exploitation in the hands of their employer.

There is much to lose if the migrant worker decides to leave his/her job - their situation of being a documented, legal worker, very quickly turns into becoming undocumented - they become criminals in the eyes of the law, and liable for detention and deportation.

"We could not proceed on our HIV/Aids research without first discussing the three most important concerns," said Fernandez.

"The action research principle required that we deal with the community first. Our research didn't shift focus. But we added on a section onto the existing issues, but which we also documented differently. It was also part of a process of gaining the confidence of the migrant workers.

"As Tenaganita researchers met with workers in Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor, we notice that there was this pattern emerging on the common experience of former detainees, and from information from the relatives of the detained," she said.

Not isolated thing

The pattern became clear by 1995, towards the conclusion of their research, but Tenaganita only made the decision to submit a memorandum to the government when journalists from The Sun failed to print their investigation.

"It is important to see that in action research, we have to address emerging issues...the memorandum came out as an outcome of our research, and not an isolated thing."

Unfortunately, said Fernandez, it seemed that the state was only keen in wanting to know the names, addresses and personal particulars of those individual workers that her team had interviewed, and did not seem interested in the allegations of deaths, abuse and torture as the migrants had claimed, which Tenaganita documented.

"The police wanted to know the details of the migrant workers. I refused, and this really annoyed them.

"Any research on health and HIV/AIDS requires that we ensure the confidentiality of the participants. I maintain that principle at all times."

In the midst of the controversy, Fernandez went abroad to attend the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in August, 1995.

With her continued campaigning there, media attention on the issue just intensified, said Fernandez.

"It was more so the international media - they were constantly questioning. From there, sending countries expressed their concern and sense of frustration over their limited access to the detention camps. Locally, The Sun in particular did quite a lot of reports."

The government reacted strongly.

Recruitment of workers were put on a freeze, the cabinet committee task force - led by deputy premier at that time, Anwar Ibrahim - was disbanded and taken over by the home ministry, led by prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

"Apparently the government ordered an independent inquiry, but it was never published."

Ironically, said Fernandez, the government was in the process of drafting a bill on migrant workers just before Tenaganita's memorandum was released.

"It was an attempt to provide a comprehensive way of dealing with migrant workers. So not only one agency was responsible, but a number of agencies would work together. It was a sensible thing."

But after her case blew over, nothing more was heard of the bill.

Police investigation began after the police chief in charge of the fourth battalion - responsible for the detention camps - filed a report of criminal defamation against her on Sept 1, 1995. On March 18 the following year, Fernandez was arrested.

Legitimate concerns

In the early days of her trial, Fernandez had said that since the government had refused to conduct its own independent inquiry, her trial would become the public inquiry that she had asked for.

"As far as we are concerned, we raised, in a legitimate way, with authorities, issues of public concern - problems faced by migrant workers, inside and outside detention centres."

As far as the court was concerned however, the testimony of the five former detainees from Bangladesh who spoke on the conditions of four different camps - Semenyih, Kemayan, Tanah Merah and Langkap - was not enough to prove that the state abused, tortured and was responsible for dehumanised treatment of migrants in the country.

Fernandez is currently out on bail and awaiting her appeal to the High Court to be heard.

But the guilty verdict, and even deputy public prosecutor Stanley Augustin's accusation that she was 'defiant' of her sentence, has not fazed the gutsy 57-year-old activist who maintains with certainty that her advocacy work on human rights will continue.

For this coming November, she has been invited by former US president Jimmy Carter to attend a roundtable on human rights; one month later, she is expected to address the German Parliament's human rights committee.

In the court of public opinion, Fernandez has won her case.