“I am speechless because I just came out of a kind of trauma that I haven’t seen in my life before.”

The United Nations and human rights groups have for years criticized Australia’s offshore detention centre policy, citing human rights abuses and called for their closure.

Australia officially closed the Manus Island centre on 31 October, after it was declared illegal by a Papua New Guinea court, but the asylum seekers refused to move to transit centres, saying they feared violent reprisals from the community.

Papua New Guinean police cleared the remaining asylum-seekers from the Manus detention complex on Friday, ending a three-week protest which saw some 600 people surviving on rainwater and smuggled food and supplies.

Australia said that all of the asylum seekers had departed for alternative accommodation, but their fate remains unclear.

“I hope ‘The Messenger’ offers an enduring and honest window into a world that’s been created by, and largely obscured from, Australians,” said Jon Tjhia, one of its six producers.

The podcast is part of an oral history project called Behind the Wire, backed by the Melbourne-based Wheeler Centre, which supports writers. A book and an exhibition are also planned.