Separatist fighters in Indonesia’s far eastern region of Papua have shot dead a helicopter pilot from New Zealand, according to police.
The rebels attacked the helicopter as soon as it landed on Monday in Alama, a remote village in the Mimika district of Central Papua province, said Faizal Ramadhani, who heads the joint security peace force in Papua.
The attackers released the four Indigenous Papuan passengers who were on board the aircraft, operated by private aviation company Intan Angkasa Air Service.
“It is confirmed that there was a hostage situation and murder carried out by the armed criminal group,” Ramadhani said, naming the pilot as 50-year-old Glen Malcolm Conning.
The motive for the killing was not immediately clear. It comes nearly 18 months after the abduction by separatists of another pilot from New Zealand, Phillip Mehrtens, who remains a captive.
A spokesperson for New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was aware of the report and that its embassy in Jakarta was seeking information from authorities, declining to comment further.
Conning was from Motueka in the north of New Zealand’s South Island and an experienced pilot, who had flown missions earlier this year to fight bushfires near Christchurch, The New Zealand Herald reported.
“[Glen] was greatly loved by the Motueka community and was a great family man,” close friend Kerry Gatenby told the paper.
A battle for independence has been rumbling for decades in Papua, a resource-rich region that is the location of one of the world’s biggest gold and copper mines.
The conflict has escalated since 2018 when separatist fighters attacked a group working on a major road project, killing 19 Indonesian construction workers.
Mehrtens was captured in February 2023 after fighters from the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPN-PB) ambushed a small commercial plane when it landed in the remote, mountainous area of Nduga. They said they would release him only when Papua got its independence from Indonesia.
Police said the TPN-PB were also behind Monday’s attack. The group is the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and in 2021 was designated a “terrorist’ organisation by Indonesia.
TPN-PB spokesman Sebby Samborn told news agencies that he had not received reports from the group’s fighters about the killing.
“But, if that happens, it was his own fault for entering our forbidden territory,” Sambom was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency. “We have released warnings several times that the area is under our restricted zone, an armed conflict area that is prohibited for any civilian aircraft to land.”
Papua, whose people are ethnically and culturally distinct from Indonesia, occupies the western half of the island of New Guinea – just 200km (124 miles) north of Australia – and shares a land border with Papua New Guinea (PNG).
A former Dutch colony, the territory was incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a controversial United Nations-backed referendum in which only about 1,000 Papuans were able to participate.
