() – New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens has been released after more than 18 months in captivity in Indonesia’s troubled Papua region, the Foreign Minister in Wellington said in a statement on Saturday.
“We are pleased and relieved to confirm that Phillip Mehrtens is safe and well and has been able to speak to his family. This news must be a huge relief to his friends and loved ones,” Winston Peters said in a statement.
An armed faction of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) kidnapped Mehrtens on 7 February 2023, after a small commercial plane landed in the remote and mountainous area of Nduga.
By holding Mehrtens, his captors hoped to pressure New Zealand into putting pressure on Indonesia to allow Papua to secede from Indonesia, a seemingly impossible demand.
Peters said his ministry, with staff in both Indonesia and Wellington, had led a “sustained whole-of-government effort to secure the release of Phillip Mehrtens”.
He added that the family had requested privacy and said no further comment would be made at this time.
The armed pro-independence fighters are led by Egianus Kogeya, a member of the TPNPB, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement. They initially threatened to kill the New Zealander if his country did not heed their demand for secession.
The TPNPB is considered a terrorist organisation by the Indonesian government and has taken hostages in the past to further its cause.
A resource-rich former Dutch colony, Papua was formally absorbed into Indonesia following a controversial referendum in 1969. Papuan independence advocates say the vote was neither free nor fair.
Since his capture last year, proof-of-life videos show Mehrtens growing increasingly thin and disheveled. He is almost always seen surrounded by fighters with guns and bows and arrows.
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