Page - 61 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Tony Kushner | Lampedusa and the Migrant Crisis 61 to Europe by sea, thousands drowning in the Mediterranean attempting to do so. A year later and outside Europe, the crisis of boat people off the Indoniesian coast became scandalous, but nothing compared to what would become the global migration story of 2015 as will be outlined shortly. Earlier in the twenty first century within the Indian Ocean, Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers attempting to reach its shores provoked international criticism with the sinking of the Palapa in 2001, a tragedy that was a portent of what was to follow in the new millen- nium. A small fishing boat, it carried over 400 asylum seekers, mainly Afghans, journeying from Indonesia and attempting to reach Christmas Island, which belongs to Australia. The Australian government was determined that those on board, rescued from the sea by the Nor- wegian vessel, the Tampa, would not enter its territory and after weeks at sea, they were detai- ned in newly created ‘off-shore processing centres’. Christmas Island and other places en route, Caroline Moorehead notes in her exploration of modern refugees, Human Cargo (2005), were ‘”excised” from Australia for the purposes of migration. Australia had effectively, by a stroke of its pen, shrunk its borders’.6 Moorehead is one of the few who has been aware of the historical precedent explored in this chapter, stating that this ‘Pacific Solution’ of relocating refugees ‘was not new – the British blockade of Palestine... had refused to let Jewish refugees land and pushed them to Cyprus’.7 It is significant that even then she dates such policies to the pre- rather than post-war era, reflec- ting the vague memories associated with this troubled policy. This article will further explore such parallels between journeys out of the Holocaust with contemporary boat migrants with 6 Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees (London: Chatto & Windus, 2005), 108. 7 Ibid. Fig. 1: The cemetery of boats, Lampedusa, Photo: Tony Kushner