On 7 February 2023, Phillip Mehrtens’ life took an unexpected and harrowing turn.
The experienced New Zealand pilot landed his tiny commercial plane at Paro airfield, a runway in the isolated highlands of Indonesia’s West Papua region. It was to be a short in and out: drop off his five passengers, pick up a group of 15 construction workers and fly back south.
But soon after landing, the Susi Air plane was stormed. A group of independence fighters grabbed Mehrtens and his passengers then set the plane alight.
All five passengers, including a young child, were released because they were Indigenous Papuans. Mehrtens was not so fortunate.
The pilot, who was living in Bali with his Indonesian wife and child, was likely aware of the risks of flying into the largely inaccessible Nduga regency, the centre of the growing Papuan insurgency. But he could not have predicted that for the next 19 months the remote highlands would become his prison and he would become a bargaining chip in West Papua’s protracted battle for independence from Indonesia.
Shortly after the ambush, rebel spokesperson Sebby Sambom put out a statement saying the West Papua Liberation Army (TPN-PB) – the military wing of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) – had seized Mehrtens because New Zealand, along with Australia and the United States, cooperates militarily with Indonesia.
“We will never release the pilot we are holding hostage unless Indonesia recognises and frees Papua from Indonesian colonialism,” Sambom said.
As the weeks turned into months, concern about Mehrtens’ safety grew.
His location was kept secret and little was divulged about the conditions he was living in. Updates from his captors were scant, offering only that his welfare was “top priority” and that he was healthy and well fed.
Clues to his wellbeing and whereabouts came via intermittent photos and videos of him standing in the mountains, surrounded by Papuan fighters brandishing rifles. The imagery was released alongside TPN-PB’s demands for the region’s independence.
Harsh conditions and death threats
“It would have been tough going,” says Damien Kingsbury, emeritus professor at Melbourne’s Deakin University and a specialist in West Papuan politics.
“He would have lived as his captors lived – essentially on the move. By and large they would have been staking out harsh conditions in the mountains,” he says. “In the highlands, it gets quite cold.”
In May 2023, the situation escalated when the rebels threatened to kill Mehrtens if their demands for independence talks were not met within two months.
In response, New Zealand authorities said they were doing everything they could to secure a peaceful resolution and Mehrtens’ safe release, but the details of those delicate talks were closely guarded.
Then, in February, exactly a year after his capture, the TPN-PB said it would free the pilot to protect humanity and safeguard human rights. Seven months later, it laid out its conditions for this release – “to be followed” by the Indonesian government, including allowing “open access” for media.
The rebels’ about-face was likely due to a number of factors, Kingsbury says.
“It took some time for it to become clear to the TPN-PB … that there wasn’t going to be any long-term benefit from keeping him – the best they could hope for was to be seen as having an humanitarian side and gaining some publicity for their cause.”
It is also likely Mehrtens became “humanised” to his captors over the lengthy period, he says, adding that is a “fairly conventional social dynamic” in hostage situations.
“Mehrtens was given the opportunity to establish a relationship, they kept him alive, he speaks Indonesian … he became a person for them.”
On Saturday, after 594 days in captivity, the rebels honoured their plan and Mehrtens became a free man.
Messages of hope
In front of clicking cameras, a thin, unshaven Mehrtens sobbed as he video-called his family. Later, dressed in a dark grey wind jacket, he thanked those who had helped secure his release.
“Today I have been freed. I am very happy that shortly I will be able to go home and meet my family,” Mehrtens told a news conference in the mining town of Timika.
In a statement, his family said the period of Mehrtens’ captivity had been “very difficult” and they were “extremely grateful and relieved” he had been released. They thanked New Zealand and Indonesian authorities for prioritising peaceful negotiations in order to keep him safe.
“As challenging as this has been, it would have been inordinately harder if we were not aware of how hard everyone was working and what actions were being taken,” they said.
They thanked General Egianus Kogoya, a regional commander in the Free Papua Movement, and his army for keeping Mehrtens in good health, and allowing him to get several messages to the family during his captivity.
“Those messages filled our souls and gave us hope and that we would eventually see Phil again.”
Mehrtens had been through “a long and arduous ordeal”, the family said, and requested privacy so he could adjust to life after captivity.
Mehrtens arrived in Jakarta’s air force base Halim Perdanakusumah just before midnight on Saturday and was greeted by Indonesian officials and New Zealand diplomats.
He then had a private reunion with his family and, after nearly 600 days, spent his first night sleeping in a bed. His health was in “remarkably good shape”, said Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister.
Peters said the negotiations had been “nerve-racking”. “It was always a concern of ours that we might not succeed. The hardest thing in an environment with no trust is to establish trust.”
Desperation in West Papua
The case has drawn renewed attention to a long-running and increasingly deadly conflict in resource-rich Papua which has unfolded since it was brought under Indonesian rule in the 1960s, in a vote widely seen as a sham that was overseen by the United Nations.
The area where Mehrtens was held remains an extremely dangerous place for West Papuans. TPN-PB regularly launch attacks and engage in skirmishes with Indonesian security forces, and the Indonesian military has been accused of brutality, including torture and murder of civilians.
There is also a much larger, peaceful civil movement for independence in the region – which stems from Indonesia’s violent repression of West Papuans. However, peaceful acts of civil disobedience by Indigenous West Papuans, such as raising the banned “Morning Star” flag, are met with police and military brutality and long jail sentences.
In 2022, UN human rights experts called for urgent and unrestricted humanitarian access to the region because of serious concerns about “shocking abuses against Indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people”.
Meanwhile, Indonesia tightly controls access for foreign journalists and human rights monitors.
Andreas Harsono, who covers Indonesia for Human Rights Watch, says there is a lot of information still missing about how the release process played out, but he believes – at this stage – the recent negotiations were peaceful.
He says Indonesia media is reporting that Mehrtens will meet with President Joko Widodo and possibly the minister of defence and president-elect, Prabowo Subianto.
“If that is true, that means Jokowi or Prabawo – or both – were involved in restraining the Indonesian military from entering the Nduga area,” Harsono said.
The New Zealand side has played a big role in urging Indonesia not to use force, Harsono said, while adding that the hostage situation has increased Indonesia’s militarisation of the region and escalated suffering for West Papuans.
