We set out to do this story after hearing anecdotal accounts of a rising sense of alienation and resentment among young Australian Muslim men, a result of the fallout from September 11 and the Bali bombings, and the subsequent "war on terror."

Their typical experience is being yelled at in the street: "Go back to where you came from. We don't want you here."

But the fact is 40 percent of Australian Muslims were born here. They have nowhere else to go.

I felt this story was important, not just because everyone deserves to feel at home in the country of their birth, but because I know from my own research on terrorism that alienation is a key factor in the evolution of disillusioned individuals toward terrorism.

The first obstacle we faced in making the program was getting anyone to talk to us. Muslim groups and communities are deeply suspicious and resentful toward the media, which they feel has stigmatised them.

Many groups and individuals we approached refused to co-operate, out of (an often legitimate) fear that they would be typecast as "the bad guys" or potential terrorists.

Thankfully some of them decided it was worth taking the risk, in order to have their say.

Another difficulty was distilling the historic and political complexities of the current global Islamist insurgency into a 45-minute television program. We think the results are revealing and disturbing.

-- From reporter Sally Neighbour

Watch the program: Part 1 Part 2

My interest in the project started in 2003 with the publication of the Body and Soul report, which revealed that more than a hundred Roma women in 40 settlements in Slovakia had been coercively sterilized.

As a freelance photojournalist in Prague at the time, I pursued the story. I traveled to eastern Slovakia and met women living in ghetto-like conditions outside Presov, the third largest Slovak city.

In Svinia, a Canadian anthropologist introduced me to villagers and various NGO workers involved with trying to improve dialogue between the local Roma and Slovaks. I had never been in a Roma settlement before and was in awe of the conditions in which they lived as well as their hospitality and sense of community, the raw humanity largely untouched by globalization and technology.

Then events unfolded before me across central Europe. In 2005, Roma women started coming forward in the Czech Republic and in early 2007, the first of these women, Helena Ferencikova, looked set to win what would be a landmark case against the hospital that allegedly sterilized her without consent. I decided it was time to look into this case and discover what exactly was nagging me about it.

Filming began with Helena Ferencikova’s court case and continued through the course of the year as we gradually got to know the other people involved and started documenting the actions of a group of women in the eastern part of the Czech Republic who had initially come together for emotional support but eventually progressed into political activism.

As non-Czech speakers, director Michelle Coomber and I were reliant on translators, who happened to be two incredible journalists. Jan Stojaspal, a former Time Magazine correspondent, was able to interview politicians and medical staff involved while Karolina Ryvolova, a Roma studies major, deftly yet delicately approached the subject with the women.

These sterilized Roma women and their husbands were wonderfully accommodating. They allowed us into their homes and their lives and really opened up about their experiences and the long-term affects the surgery had on them.

This "Group of Women Harmed by Sterilisation," led by Elena Gorolova, were fairly media savvy and comfortable in front of our cameras, presumably because Czech news crews had been interviewing Gorolova and her colleagues for years about their plight. This was in contrast to Helena Ferencikova, who was extremely sensitive about talking with us. The charms of an American associate producer and his elementary Czech however, allowed us unprecedented access to both her and her husband in their home.

Although the documentary highlights the women, we also interviewed the doctors and governmental bodies principally involved in the majority of Czech cases, who were also very open in discussing the particulars of the Ferencikova case.

I had been advised by several journalists that the fundamental issue here was informed consent, albeit informed consent intrinsically linked with antiquated remnants of the Communist regime. Regardless, questions remained over the extent of modern-day eugenics and the spokesperson of the health ministry admitted that had this occurred in a country like the UK, medical staff would have been terminated. The issue is not simple however, and has many sides, as the personal opinion of a nurse regarding the Czech social benefit system reveals.

Michelle and I have been repeatedly told this isn’t the most glamorous topic for a debut documentary but the uniqueness of the women’s actions and the courage necessary to stand together against the authorities in a world where Roma are still marginalized, is very compelling, and strikes a chord at the fundamental essence of womanhood.

-- From producer Dana Wilson