Professor Perera worked with Professor Joseph Pugliese of Macquarie University, and partner investigators in the USA and UK to create the site, which aims to avoid the dehumanising effect of official inquiries by using visual art, narrative testimony and critical analysis to tell stories and place them in a global context. The site was described at its London launch, ahead of a coming Sydney launch, as a “living public archive for our times”, akin to the Forensic Architecture project shortlisted for the 2018 Tate Prize. The Sydney event on February 16 will feature Professor Perera, who has worked in refugee issues for many years, but who formed the idea for the project in 2015 with her colleagues, after two momentous tragedies occurred within months of each other in late 2014. The first was that of Ms Dhu, a 22 year-old woman of the Yamatji-Nanda Nation and the Banjima People, who died within 44 hours of being taken into custody at the South Hedland police lock-up for unpaid fines. Ms Dhu had sepsis as a result of broken ribs, sustained through domestic violence, and repeatedly called for medical help before she died.

The second was the death of Hamid Khazaei, an Iranian 24-year-old in immigration detention on Manus Island, who also developed sepsis after a cut on his foot became infected and was not taken to hospital until he had had several heart attacks and was in the early stages of brain death. “This was two young people in their 20s, who both died of an infection that could in any other situation been manageable,” Professor Perera said. The site uses multimedia to return an element of humanity to stories such as that of Ms Dhu. Credit:Left: Michelle Bui. Background: Deathscapes.org “We asked, what is this system that can produce these kinds of deaths of young people in custody?” The researchers won Australian Research Council funding for a three-year project and began to gather data for Deathscapes. At the heart of the website are case studies of the deaths in the UK, US and Australia, with the largest numbers from Australia.

As well as Ms Dhu, the site tells the story of Mr Ward, a senior Ngaanyatjarra lore man and artist, aged 46, who died in the back of a prison van while being transported across the Western Desert in 2008 following his arrest for drink-driving. Another case study covers all those who have died in Australia’s offshore detention facilities in Nauru and on Manus Island. “We almost can’t keep up on [offshore detention deaths] as another person and another person dies,” Professor Perera said. “Another is on the deaths from Villawood – and again, there was another just this week.” The site also carries daily dispatches of recent death in custody inquests in Australia, such as the inquests for Dunghutti man David Dungay and Kurdish refugee Fazel Chegeni Nejad.

Global case studies include that of Anastasio Hernández Rojas, beaten and tasered to death by USA border agents as he was being deported to Mexico, and the death of Jimmy Mubenga, who died on a plane in the custody of G4S guards as he was being deported from the UK. Every story contains connecting links to other case studies and movements of resistance, across time and place, and is rich in images, often produced by people in detention themselves, or the communities around them. The case study of Mr Ward. Credit:Deathscapes.org “We don’t just want to document the harrowing aspects, but to show people’s resilience, resistance and resourcefulness. All of that is on the screen: artwork, testimony, film, poetry,” Professor Perera said. “It makes the site very different to government reports, which are often detached, and draws from the Black Lives Matter campaign movement, which has used art, protests, dance and song as a way to mobilise and raise consciousness.”

The research found that people who died in custody were overwhelmingly Indigenous people and other racialised groups in proportion to their numbers in the population. “We realised that the settler state is one predicated on two things,” Professor Perera said. “One is clearing the Indigenous from the land. The logic of Terra Nullius, which continues in the present in many ways, such as recent commentary saying there was no such thing as the Stolen Generation. “The second is in this emphasis on securing and controlling borders. “Both of these things are linked through what we call a logic of sovereignty, of controlling and taking possession of land.”

She said the project uncovered patterns in the way states across the world “managed the bodies” of people in these racialised groups, and explored how the logic of sovereignty enabled certain kinds of deaths, particularly at borders. It explored concepts such as 'necrotransport' and 'weaponised nature'. Timelines help set the events into global contexts. Credit:Deathscapes.org 'Necrotransport' refers to how transport used for people in custody, such as leaky, overcrowded or sabotaged boats, or a roasting prison van, can frequently become the means of their death. 'Weaponised nature' refers to how landscape features such as oceans, mountains and deserts – the deserts people cross to reach the US/Mexico border, for example, and the dangerous ocean journeys people undertake to reach Australia – also become the medium of death for those seeking to cross state borders.

While these deaths are understood as being caused by ‘nature’, the research suggests state policies act to channel and direct peoples’ movements through such environments. The team will continue adding to the site until the end of 2019, when funding runs out, and will then seek to align with non-governmental organisations to continue the work. Professor Perera said the families of the individuals studied had given their blessing and several had said they would use it to help teach their children. “We can already see that people are using the site in ways we hadn’t thought about, as an archive ... to remember events and protests,” she said. “[This is] a way of amplifying their voices – it’s not that they haven’t been protesting and making their own artwork, but we have been able to use and combine the things outside not only their community but outside their country.