Transcript
The six Chinese nationals, whose identities aren't known, were arrested in a night raid by Vanuatu police two weeks ago.
Then, on Friday, they were escorted to a private plane with Vanuatu and Chinese police clutching an arm each.
The Vanuatu Daily Post newspaper, which broke the story, said Vanuatu had been convinced to enforce Chinese law within its own borders.
But Internal Affairs Minister Andrew Napuat disputes that.
"What we did here was a normal operation that was conducted by immigration and the Vanuatu police force. Whenever there is a removal order by the Minister, the immigration officers and the Vanuatu police force will act on that order."
Mr Napuat says China collecting the group was the best solution because airlines operating in Vanuatu would not take them.
He says the government was also keen to save money from accommodating and feeding the Chinese nationals.
Still, observers were quick to point out the similarities to the deportations of nearly 80 Chinese suspects in Fiji in 2017.
The group, who were reportedly part of a online fraud syndicate, were rounded up by Chinese police and flown to China.
A Vanuatu Foreign Ministry official said at the time the same thing couldn't happen in Vanuatu.
Pacific analyst Tess Newton Cain says it's concerning Vanuatu hasn't been able to say what the deported people have been charged with.
"Due process and natural justice don't appear to have been observed, then I think that that is a concern that any sovereign country would feel that it needed to all that it was appropriate to forgo those things at the request of another country, whether that country is China, Australia, New Zealand or anybody else."
Andrew Napuat says Chinese police provided arrest warrants for the group but no crime was listed on the documents.
He says Vanuatu would comply in the same way with any other country which provided arrest warrants for fugitives.
But that hasn't satisfied the Vanuatu Daily Post's editor, Dan McGarry, who says it's still unclear where the ununiformed Chinese police were from.
"I'd like to know the names of the people who were arrested, the crimes that they're charged with, and what is going to happen to them now that they've been returned to China. We'd also like to know what specific protocols were invoked by the government have been a lot to whether they the people who were arrested were given access to legal counsel, and whether any of them sought to appeal, the deportation order."
Andrew Napuat says Vanuatu has learned lessons from the incident last week and that deportations remain a serious challenge for the country.
He says the government has also struggled with the dozens of Bangladeshi men who were trafficked to Vanuatu, housed for months and then deported.
The Chinese embassy in Vanuatu didn't respond to requests for comment.
