A New Zealand pilot has been killed by gunmen in Indonesia’s Papua region, marking a tragic escalation in the ongoing conflict, The New York Times reports, adding that the authorities have attributed the killing to the West Papua Liberation Army which was also responsible for the kidnapping of another New Zealand pilot last year.
The West Papua Liberation Army is an armed pro-independence group in the isolated and impoverished region, the country’s easternmost.
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Separatists have occasionally used the kidnapping of foreign citizens to draw attention to their decades-long cause and for leverage in negotiations, but the intentional killing of foreigners is extremely rare. The rebel group accused by the authorities of killing Glen Conning, the pilot, on Monday said it was not clear that its fighters were involved.
Last year, a faction of the West Papua Liberation Army captured another New Zealand pilot and has been holding him hostage since.
The rebels initially threatened to kill that pilot, Phillip Mehrtens, unless Indonesia recognized West Papua’s independence, said Damien Kingsbury, an emeritus professor at Deakin University in Australia who acted as an intermediary for part of the negotiations for Mr. Mehrtens’s release.
But that was untenable, Mr. Kingsbury said, and the group later switched its focus to negotiating with New Zealand.
Sebby Sambom, the spokesman for the West Papua Liberation Army, said that he had not received any reports from fighters on the ground about Mr. Conning’s killing. The rebels have previously warned foreigners not to physically enter into what they describe as a war between Indonesia and the West Papuan separatists.
The Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua comprise the western half of the island of New Guinea, the world’s second-largest island after Greenland. The eastern half of the island is the independent nation of Papua New Guinea.
Indigenous Papuans, distinct in ethnicity and culture from Indonesians, have long contested Indonesia’s control over the territory. Following Dutch colonial rule, Indonesia claimed the entire former Dutch East Indies, including Papua and West Papua, which it annexed in 1963. A controversial 1969 vote, widely considered rigged by many Papuans, led to Indonesia taking full control.
Since then, a movement for independence has gained momentum, fueled by grievances over Indonesian control and exploitation of the region’s rich natural resources. This movement, supported by a majority of Papuans according to Cammi Webb-Gannon, a senior lecturer and coordinator of the West Papua Project at the University of Wollongong, has manifested in both nonviolent activism and armed struggle.
Human rights groups have consistently voiced concerns about the heavy Indonesian military presence in Papua and documented numerous human rights violations against Indigenous Papuans.
