Gunmen stormed a helicopter and killed its New Zealand pilot shortly after it landed in Indonesia’s troubled Papua region on Monday, freeing two health workers and two children it was carrying, police said.
Glen Malcolm Conninga pilot for the Indonesian aviation company PT Intan Angkasa Air Service, was shot dead by gunmen believed to be from the West Papua Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement, after landing in Alama, a remote village in Mimika district of Central Papua province, said Faizal Ramadhani, a member of the National Police who heads the joint security peacekeeping force in Papua.
The gunmen freed the indigenous Papuan passengers and they set fire to the planesaid.
“All the passengers were safe as they were local residents of Alama village,” Ramadhani said, adding that the village is in a mountainous district that can only be reached by helicopter. A joint security force was deployed to search for the attackers, who fled into the dense jungle.
New Zealand’s foreign ministry confirmed late Tuesday that Conning had been killed. Consular officials in Jakarta were working with authorities to “understand more about the circumstances” surrounding the helicopter pilot’s death, the ministry said in a statement.
West Papua Liberation Army spokesman Sebby Sambom told The Associated Press he had not received any reports from fighters on the ground about the killing.
“But if that happens, it is their fault for having entered our forbidden territory,” Sambom said. “We have warned several times that this area is within our restricted zone, an armed conflict zone where the landing of any civilian aircraft is prohibited.”
Sambom called on Indonesian authorities to halt all development in Papua until the government is willing to negotiate with the rebels, and “if anyone disobeys, they will have to bear the risk themselves.”
Conflicts between indigenous Papuans and Indonesian security forces are common in the impoverished region of Papua, a former Dutch colony in western New Guinea that is ethnically and culturally distinct from much of Indonesia. The conflict has escalated in the past year, with dozens of rebels, security forces and civilians killed.
Monday’s killing was the latest episode of violence against New Zealanders in the Papua region.
In February 2023, Egianus Kogoyaa regional commander of the Free Papua Movement, kidnapped Philip Mark Mehrtens, a Christchurch pilot working for Indonesian airline Susi Air.
Kogoya and his troops attacked a single-engine plane shortly after it landed on a small runway in a mountain village. Kogoya, who plans to use the pilot to negotiate, has said they will not release Mehrtens unless Indonesia frees Papua as a sovereign country.
In 2020, seven employees of PT Freeport Indonesiaamong them a miner New Zealander, Graeme Thomas Wallfrom Ngaruawahia, were attacked by gunmen in a car park in Tembagapura, a mining town. Wall was shot in the chest and died.
Papua joined Indonesia in 1969, following a UN-sponsored vote that was widely seen as a sham. Since then, a low-level insurgency has simmered in the mineral-rich region, which is divided into six provinces.
Flying is the only practical way to access many areas in the easternmost mountainous provinces of Papua and West Papua.
(with information from AP)
