Tampa View is a short, quiet street on Christmas Island. Less than two hundred metres long, it ends at a sharp cliff descending into the Indian Ocean. When you stand at the end of the street you can see peaceful Flying Fish Cove, one or two boats dotting the ocean and, in the distance, Ta Jin House, which once accommodated the island administrator but is now a small museum.

Eight years ago, standing at Tampa View was a different story. If you gazed out to the ocean, the MV Tampa and its human cargo were visible. You would have seen the transformation of Ta Jin House into a SAS military base. The Cove during this time was flooded with international media while Christmas Islanders protested over the Howard government’s treatment of the asylum seekers on board the vessel and detained on their own island.

Disgusted with the Howard government’s handling of the Tampa affair, Christmas Islanders renamed one of their streets Tampa View. The memories of this event remain etched on the minds of those who protested against this pivotal event in Australia’s political history. Recollections of the stand-off between the rescue endeavours of the Tampa captain and the hard-heartedness of the Howard government are still raw.

The consequences of this affair were enormous. In the short-term, it gave rise to the Pacific Solution, with Australia paying other countries to do its dirty work. Nauru detained the mainly Afghan Tampa asylum seekers, allowing Australia to avoid its duties as a signatory of the Refugee Convention. Longer-term excision, which had no precedent in Australian law, was inscribed into Australia’s Migration Act. Axed from the migration zone, remote Australian islands, including Christmas Island, no longer belonged.

Less known is the oppositional stance that came from Christmas Island. Local residents directly witnessed the unfolding of the Tampa affair and continue today to experience the ignominy of excision with 700 asylum seekers, including families and separated children, detained on their island. Little-known is how island residents – mostly ethnic Chinese and Malays – experienced Tampa. Unlike other Australians who watched the events on their television screens, islanders viewed the unfolding fiasco at their doorstep. While mainstream Australia supported Howard’s stance against the “uncontrollable number of illegal arrivals in this country”, Christmas Islanders welcomed the asylum seekers protesting in the cove with a political slogan of their own, “Let them land”.

Earlier this year we spoke to Christmas Islanders about their experiences during that period. A common thread in each story was compassion, empathy and protest. Acts of humanity towards asylum seekers before and during Tampa were largely influenced by their own relocation to the island as fodder for the phosphate industry where they too experienced marginalisation. Islanders told us of their early experiences of exclusion, segregation and humiliation where the imported mine workers were exploited and treated as second class citizens and not allowed to enter whites-only establishments. They recounted how they undertook collective action to confront their own oppression, including the formation of a union. For many islanders it was obvious what they should do about Tampa; as one person told us “We are all refugees”.

Christmas Islanders’ support for the asylum seekers was unequivocal. Community leaders issued a public statement, which they faxed to the Tampa, criticising the Howard government’s inhuman behaviour and expressing sympathy for the vessel’s human cargo, premised on their own experiences of exclusion. But sometimes actions speak louder than words. Down at Flying Fish Cove, locals protested over the Howard government’s actions. One resident stripped off to her shorts and bikini top to reveal ‘Let them Land’ written on her midriff; she was standing with the leader of the Muslim Women’s Association, who was covered up in headscarf and long shirt holding a placard stating, “Please let the refugees in”. Another islander placed a sheet on her roof with “welcome” painted on it.

Residents were affronted at how their peaceful island domain was transformed into what many described as a war zone. Islanders were angered by the intrusive presence of military personnel and hardware, and the closure of fishing sites.

While the Rudd government deserves commendation for abolishing the Pacific Solution, its current policy – processing unauthorised boat arrivals on Christmas Island – continues to limit the rights of both asylum seekers and islanders. In the Tampa Reinvented of 2009, human rights advocates are once again condemning the isolation and desolation of asylum seekers on Christmas Island. Deemed not worthy of the rights of asylum seekers on mainland soil, those who arrive by boat are relegated to a state of exclusion. Once again, islanders experience imposition for political gain. The island is awash with not only asylum seekers but also droves of detention personnel flown in to support and contain them. It is not beyond possibility that the permanent population of 1400 will double.

In remembering Tampa and its consequences, both the banished asylum seeker and islanders are again on the margins of society and are subject to the whims of government. As one island resident proclaimed: “Everything changed after Tampa”. In the new configuration of island power, segregation again emerges on the island with asylum seekers and the asylum seeker industry set apart from those who truly call Christmas Island home.