Glen Malcolm Conning was shot dead after landing his helicopter in a remote village, 19 months after another pilot was captured.
Separatist fighters in Indonesia’s far eastern Papua region have shot dead a New Zealand helicopter pilot, police said.
Rebels attacked the helicopter as it landed on Monday in Alama, a remote village in Mimika district of Central Papua province, said Faizal Ramadhani, who heads the joint peace and security force in Papua.
The attackers freed 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 committed 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 almost 18 months after the kidnapping by separatists of another New Zealand pilot, Phillip Mehrtens, who remains 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] He was well-loved by the Motueka community and was a great family man,” close friend Kerry Gatenby told the newspaper.
A battle for independence has been raging for decades in Papua, a resource-rich region that is home to one of the largest gold and copper mines in the world.
The conflict has worsened 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 West Papua National Liberation Army (TPN-PB) fighters ambushed a small commercial plane as it landed in the remote mountainous area of Nduga. They said they would only release him when Papua gained independence from Indonesia.
Police said the TPN-PB was also behind Monday’s attack. The group is the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and in 2021 was designated a “terrorist” organization 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,” said Sambom, quoted by the Associated Press news agency. “We have issued warnings several times that the area is under our restricted zone, an area of armed conflict where the landing of any civilian aircraft is prohibited.”
Papua, whose people are ethnically and culturally distinct from Indonesia, occupies the western half of the island of New Guinea – just 200 km (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 following a controversial United Nations-backed referendum in which only around 1,000 Papuans were able to participate.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
