Re-living Jenga : survivor narratives

On December 15, 2010, the asylum seeker boat, Janga, subsequently known as Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel (SIEV) 221, crashed in wild stormy weather on rocks at Australia’s Indian Ocean Territory of Christmas Island, killing fifty people, including fifteen children. Forty-one people, including crew, survived; only thirty bodies were recovered. Televised imagery of the crash created shockwaves around the nation but within days it was apparent that there were competing narratives. Distressed Christmas Islanders who made courageous efforts to save lives talked about the trauma of witnessing. Rapacious media reported stories of wild seas, rocks, bodies, the morgue, and grief. The government seized on a platform that produced a mantra: “We” do not want to see people drowning on “our” shores. Despite their pleas to be heard through the media, narratives of survivors remained hidden by the government from public view. This chapter aims to reverse the silencing by revealing experiences of survivors, drawing on interviews, testimony at the coronial inquest into the tragedy, and other means of survivor communication. One of the authors (Dimasi) was on the island at the time of the tragedy and witnessed the suffering of survivors; her observations are incorporated. The silencing of survivor voices and privileging of more-powerful declarations can be understood by the trope of boats and ensuing fear and politics.