Papua rebels are marching Kiwi pilot to jungle base

Phillip Mehrtens is being ‘well looked after’ but will be held prisoner until his government made contact.

Indonesia troops, deployed to look for NZ pilot Phillip Mehrtens, after landing in Papua this week

A New Zealand-born pilot taken hostage in Indonesia’s Papuan central highlands on Tuesday by the armed wing of the Free Papuan Movement is being “well looked after” but will be held prisoner until his government makes contact with his captors.

West Papuan National Liberation Army (TPNPB) spokesman Sebby Sambom said Phillip Mehrtens, 37, was on route to the armed group’s headquarters in a thickly jungled area of Nduga Province.

The HQ is a four-day walk from the remote Paro airstrip where he was seized on Tuesday and his plane torched after landing a commercial Susi Air flight with five passengers on board.

“We will look after him, no worries. We have already told him he is our neighbour and not our enemy. Indonesia is our enemy,” the spokesman for the rebel secessionist group told The Australian in a phone interview on Thursday, adding if he had been an Indonesian pilot he would have “already been killed”.

“He will stay with us until the New Zealand government talk to us,” he said,

But Mr Sambom added: “If New Zealand do not want to discuss this with us, then this pilot will stay with us and train our boys how to fly aircraft. He has good skills and we need that.”

The rebel group has issued a series of demands in return for Mr Mehrtens’ release, including that Australia, NZ, the US and European nations stop arming and training Indonesian security forces and police, which it accuses of mass human rights abuses in the country’s easternmost province.

It has also reiterated long-held demands for independence for West Papua – a former name for the resource-rich but impoverished and highly militarised region where resistance groups have fought an insurgency against Indonesian forces since Jakarta annexed the former Dutch colony in 1963.

While the rebels initially threatened to kill Mr Mehrtens if their demands were not met, Mr Sambom said they did not intend to harm the New Zealander and had taken him hostage to get international attention for their cause.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, in Canberra on Thursday for the annual Australia Indonesia defence and foreign ministry dialogue, told Kompas newspaper she had assured her New Zealand counterpart the government was doing all it could to rescue Mr Mehrtens.

Indonesian police said late on Wednesday they had already evacuated 15 workers who were threatened by TPNPB soldiers while building a health centre in Nduga.

Five Papuan passengers on board the Susi Air plane seized alongside Mr Mehrtens were also freed in a joint military and police operation, senior commissioner Faizal Rahmadani said.

“Various efforts are still being made to find out the whereabouts of the pilot,” he added.

Mr Sambom denied his group had taken the workers or the five passengers hostage, and dismissed military claims that Mr Mehrtens had already escaped his captors as a “hoax”.

But he conceded the group was worried about mass casualties – given the number of civilians living in jungle areas after fleeing security operations in recent years – should the military launch a rescue operation.

The military’s presence in Nduga has exploded since 2018 when TPNPB insurgents killed a soldier and 19 workers building roads and bridges, sparking a cycle of tit-for-tat violence including the murder and decapitation of four Papuan civilians last September by a group of soldiers.

In 1996, the Free Papua Movement took 26 members of a World Wildlife Fund research team captive in the same Nduga Regency, quickly freeing 15 Indonesians but holding four Britons, two Dutch and five Indonesians hostage for four months as the International Committee of the Red Cross negotiated their release. In the end, the rebels reneged on the agreement and two hostages were killed during rescue operations by Indonesia’s Kopassus Special Forces.

Additional reporting: Dian Septiari