Pacific lsland links: Nauru recession looms, PNG police, Manus movie and more

By Euan Moyle, an intern in the Lowy Institute's Melanesia Program.

• ABC Radio National has investigated the deportation of 77 Chinese nationals from Fiji by uniformed Chinese police in August. The group was accused of online gambling fraud but the two-part investigation suggests they were sex workers for the Chinese diaspora in Fiji. A summary of Part 1 is here, the full program here and Part 2 here.
  
• As evacuations from the Ambae volcanic eruption continue in Vanuatu, Dan McGarry reflects on how ni-Vanuatu people have mobilised to help those displaced.
  
• Radio National New Zealand reports on politics and policing in Papua New Guinea in the wake of the national election.
  
• A French appeals court has ordered former French Polynesian President Gaston Flosse and 12 others to repay $US3.3 million spent on phantom jobs to benefit Flosse’s Tahoera’a Huiraatira Party.
  
• The World Bank has warned Nauru risks recession next year if it does not diversify its economy. The island nation relies heavily on its dwindling phosphate resources and Australia’s regional refugee processing centre.
  
• A movie secretly shot by refugee Behrouz Boochani inside the Manus Island detention centre, Chauka, Please Tell us the Time, premiered at the London Film Festival.
  
• The Development Policy Centre at ANU in Canberra is recruiting a Research/Policy Fellow to work on relevant research on economic development in PNG and the Pacific.