New Zealand pilot freed after 19 months in Indonesia's Papua
A pilot from New Zealand, held hostage for more than a year in the restive Papua region of Indonesia, was freed by separatist rebels on Saturday.
Phillip Mark Mehrtens, a 38-year-old pilot from Christchurch, was working for Indonesian aviation company Susi Air when he was abducted by rebels from a remote airport on February 7, 2023.
“Today, I finally got out. I am so happy to be back home with my family soon,” Mehrtens told reporters in a news conference in the mining town of Timika. “Thank you to everyone who helped me get out safety and healthy.”
Television news earlier showed an emaciated, long-haired Mehrtens, wearing a dark-green shirt and black shorts, sitting in a room surrounded by police officers and local officials. He sobbed while talking to his family via video conferencing, with an officer trying to calm him down by patting his back.
He was later flown to Jakarta to be reunited with his family.
Rebels have used violence to try to achieve independence as the security situation deteriorates in Indonesia's easternmost region of Papua, a former Dutch colony in the western part of New Guinea that is ethnically and culturally distinct from much of Indonesia.
Papua was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 under a United Nations-sponsored ballot, which was widely seen as a sham. Since then, a low-level insurgency has simmered. The conflict spiked in the past year, with dozens of rebels, security forces and civilians killed.
Egianus Kogoya, a regional commander in the Free Papua Movement, initially said the rebels would not release Mehrtens unless Indonesia's government allows Papua to become a sovereign country.
Then, on Tuesday, leaders of the West Papua Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, issued a proposal for freeing Mehrtens that outlined terms including news media involvement in his release.
A taskforce spokesperson, Bayu Suseno, said Mehrtens' release was the result of hard work from a small task force team that had been communicating with separatists, led by Kogoya, through the local church and community leaders as well as youth figures.
“This is incredibly good news,” said Suseno.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said a wide range of government agencies had been working with Indonesian authorities and others to secure the release for the past 19 and a half months.
“The case has taken a toll on the Mehrtens family, who have asked for privacy,” Peters added.
In April 2023, armed separatists attacked Indonesian troops, who were deployed to rescue Mehrtens, killing at least six soldiers. In August, gunmen stormed a helicopter and killed its New Zealand pilot, Glen Malcolm Conning, after it landed in Alama, a remote village in the Mimika district of the Central Papua province. No one has claimed responsibility for that attack, and the rebels and Indonesian authorities have blamed each other.
