Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
KUALA LUMPUR: Irene Xavier was spending a quiet evening at her brother’s home in Singapore when the police suddenly barged in and arrested her.
It was October 1987 and the Malaysian authorities were cracking down on anyone they considered a threat. Back then Xavier, a former government school teacher, was a prominent activist for workers’ rights in Malaysia.
She had been educating workers about participating in unions, how they could vote, and how they could take charge instead of depending on union leaders to work on their behalf.
“I don’t think the government liked it,” she said with a hint of a smile, in a recent interview with FMT.
At the border, the Singaporean authorities handed her over to the Malaysian police, who took her to jail on what she still claims were trumped up charges.
“They accused me of attending communist meetings in the Philippines. They said I had made a speech there, which was not true. And they said I spoke Tagalog, which I don’t.”
She was locked up in a windowless police cell for 60 days, with no way of knowing whether it was day or night.
It was difficult to keep track of the date, because she could only count each passing day in her head.
“Basically I was held at the whim of the government. I didn’t have access to any real information. I couldn’t watch television, and of course I had no newspapers. Whatever they told me, that’s the only information I got,” she said.
“During the 60 days, they didn’t tell me where I was or how long I would be held.”
They interrogated her nearly every day. Afterwards, back in her cell, she would replay each session over and over again in her head.
“You would fill your head with questions. They asked this, so what are they actually trying to get? Should I have said this? Maybe I should not have said that. Am I putting other people in danger?
“You have a very active mental conversation with yourself on each day you are confined,” she said. “I guess that’s the only way to stay relatively sane.”
She recalled a time during one of the interrogation sessions when she was beaten by a male police officer.
“He beat the soles of my feet. It was painful, but I was more angry. How dare they beat me! And they could have done much worse if they’d wanted to. There was nothing I could do to stop them.”
She refrained from asking for anything from her captors, as she had learned that when she did they would use her request as leverage in exchange for information and cooperation.
After 60 days, most of the detainees had been released, except for her and three other women.
One day she was unexpectedly taken out of her cell and put in a van with the other three and taken to the Kamunting detention centre. There, they told her, she was to be detained for two years.
She recalled the three of them being incarcerated in a wooden building in a kind of dormitory with a kitchen and a shared toilet. Every evening at 6pm they were locked in for the night.
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