Human Rights Overboard: seeking asylum in Australia

In 2005, in the wake of the Cornelia Rau scandal, a citizen’s inquiry was established to bear witness to events in Australia’s immigration-detention facilities. Until then, the federal government had refused to conduct a broad-ranging investigation into immigration detention, and the operations within detention centres had been largely shrouded in official secrecy.

The People’s Inquiry into Detention (as it came to be called) heard heartbreaking evidence about asylum-seekers’ journeys to Au...