Conducting a National Inquiry into Systemic Patterns of Human Rights Violation Process of the inquiry and participants All HREOC Commissioners participated in the National Inquiry, the only HREOC national inquiry conducted by the Commission as a whole. In addition, 11 Indigenous Australians were appointed as part-time Inquiry Commissioners to assist with their expertise. They joined the HREOC Commissioners in conducting the public hearings and in preparing the final report. Finally, an Indigenous Advisory Council was established to provide expert advice to the Inquiry from those most intimately connected to the issues under investigation. From December 1995, the Inquiry conducted hearings in the national capital, every state and territory capital city and in various regional centres. It took evidence in 49 cities and towns over 99 days of hearings. It received oral and written evidence from 535 Indigenous individuals affected by the separation policies. In total, 777 submissions were received from individuals, Governments and organisations.21 Where necessary, private hearings and confidentiality in recorded testimonies protected individual victims’ privacy. An Indigenous social worker provided support to those giving evidence, in recognition of the difficulty of revisiting traumatic experiences. The Inquiry also took evidence from former mission and Government employees, church and other NGO representatives and Government representatives. The Inquiry also commissioned research into key aspects of its terms of reference, including examining the implications in international law of the removal policies and analysing present practices of removal of Indigenous children through juvenile justice and child welfare proceedings. The report made a number of historic findings. It estimated that between one in ten and one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed between 1910 and 1970, the majority principally on the basis of being Indigenous, rather than for their welfare. Placed in church missions and institutions or with non-Indigenous foster parents, children were often moved several times. The Inquiry found that forcible removal and multiple displacements directly contributed to breakdowns in victims’ emotional health and that many suffered verbal, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of public officials or as a result of the actions of public authorities. Authorities and individuals appointed to guardianship roles were found to have failed in their duty of care to Indigenous wards. Significantly, the removal of Indigenous children from about 1946 was found to be an act of genocide under international law. The HREOC was very conscious of the seriousness of this finding and came to this conclusion only after intensive study of the facts as it had found them and the application of international law to those facts. It concluded that the Newspaper clipping, Australian Archives collection law, policies and practices that enabled the removal of the children constituted genocide at least from the time that genocide was defined after World War II. The definition in the Genocide Convention includes forcibly transferring children of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group to another group with intent to destroy that group, in whole or in part.22 The inquiry recognised that many of those removed under the earlier separation policies have subsequently been separated from their own children under contemporary government schemes. It concluded that Indigenous children continue to be over-represented among children removed from families for welfare purposes and in the juvenile justice system. 90 21 ‘Background Note: “Sorry: the unfinished business of the Bringing Them Home report”’: Coral Dow, Social Policy Section, Parliamentary Library of Australia; 4 February 2008; available at: www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/ Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0708/BringingThemHomeReport. 22 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948; article II.