PACIFIC BRIEFS 9/2/2017

SEVERE weather across the pacific PACIFIC –Wet weather is now causing strife in several Pacific nations.

The northwest of Fiji’s Viti Levu is struggling as rain that has fallen for several days continues. There has been extensive flooding, some schools have been closed and some residents have been forced to move to evacuation shelters. Another storm system is forecast for later this week. In Tonga a heavy rain warning is in force with the Vava’u and the Ha’apai island groups expected to get the brunt of the bad weather from Thursday night. Some schools were closed on Wednesday due to flooding concerns. There was also flooding earlier this week in Solomon Islands and forecasters there say more bad weather is due later this week. Heavy rain in New Caledonia has cut roads on the main island’s east coast, with the region warned to expect up to 150 millimetres of rain yesterday.

refugee escapee appears in png court

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – The Iranian refugee Loughman Sawari is being treated in hospital while he awaits court in Papua New Guinea. Sawari who was earlier detained on Manus Island was sent back to PNG last week after trying to seek asylum in Fiji. PNG police have charged him with giving false information in his application for a PNG passport which he used to fly to Fiji. The 21-year-old has been detained at a police station in Port Moresby this week and was brought to court to apply for bail but the matter was deferred. The UN refugee agency has said it is profoundly concerned for Sawari’s welfare. Sawari was detained on Manus Island when he was a 17-year-old. He had been determined a refugee and was living homeless in the city of Lae before he hatched a plan to escape to Fiji. Fiji has been strongly condemned for sending the young man to an uncertain fate back in Papua New Guinea.

BID TO STOP REFUGEE DEPORTATIONS

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – The lawyer representing about 900 men detained on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island says he will apply for a court injunction to stop any of the detainees from being deported. The PNG government is planning to deport 60 men to their countries of origin as they have not been granted refugee status. Lawyer Ben Lomai said he had two options to stop the deportations, the first being to seek a judicial review. “The other option would be to go back using the current proceedings we have in the Supreme Cou to make that application on the basis that they have already filed a case contesting the issue of their return back to Australia. So on that basis alone we can ask for the court to injunct the deportations.” Lomai said he hoped to file the application to stop the deportations this week.

bodies stored in shipping container

SOLOMON ISLANDS – The National Referral Hospital in Honiara in Solomon Islands is to use a container as a temporary morgue. The Minister of Health and Medical Services, Dr Teutai Kaitu’u said plans to build a new morgue at the eastern end of the National Referral Hospital have been discarded because the hospital site is prone to natural disasters. He said the recent earthquake’s destruction of parts of the hospital had forced the ministry to halt the relocation plan. But he said the new morgue will be built at the new National Referral Hospital, the site of which is yet to be made public. Dr Kaitu’u said in the interim, a refrigerated shipping container will be used to supplement the morgue. MPs had said in parliament that it was sad that families were forced to see the bodies of loved ones placed in an industrial container outside the hospital because of a lack of place in the morgue.

BUSH TO BE CLEARED ON TROUBLED ROAD

NEW CALEDONIA – The government of New Caledonia’s southern province plans to clear vegetation along a troubled main road as part of measures to end attacks on travellers and police. It has given a contract worth almost one million US dollars to a company from St Louis to remove potential hiding places for those who throw rocks and fire guns at the road users near St Louis. The road near St Louis, which connects Noumea and the territory’s south, was re-opened for night-time traffic on Monday after being closed for a week because unidentified gunmen shot and injured three police officers. The High Commission has also ordered the deployment of armoured police vehicles to be able to intervene at any time.