On February 7, 2023, Philippe Mertens' life took an unexpected and tragic turn.
A skilled New Zealand pilot landed a small passenger plane on the runway at Paro airfield in the isolated highlands of Indonesia's West Papua region, dropping off five passengers and picking up 15 construction workers for the short flight back south.
But shortly after landing, the Susi Airlines plane was attacked by a group of independence activists who captured Mertens and the passengers and set the plane on fire.
All five passengers, including a young child, were released because they were indigenous Papuans. Mertens was not so lucky.
The pilot, who lived in Bali with his Indonesian wife and child, likely knew the risks of flying into the nearly inaccessible Nduga regency, the heartland of a growing Papuan insurgency. But he probably didn't expect that for the next 19 months, the remote highlands would become his prison and a bargaining chip in West Papua's long-running fight for independence from Indonesia.
Shortly after the ambush, rebel spokesman Seby Sambom issued a statement saying Mertens had been detained by the West Papua Liberation Army (TPN-PB), the military wing of the Organisation of Free Papua (OPM), as New Zealand cooperates militarily with Indonesia along with Australia and the United States.
“We will never release the pilots we are holding hostage unless Indonesia recognises and liberates Papua from Indonesian colonialism,” Sambom said.
As the weeks and months passed, concerns for Mertens' safety grew.
His location has been kept secret and little has been revealed about his living conditions; the few updates from his captors have been that his welfare is a “top priority” and that he is healthy and well-fed.
Clues as to his safety and whereabouts came from occasional photographs and videos of him standing in the mountains surrounded by rifle-branding Papuan fighters, images released alongside the TPN-PB's demand for independence for the region.
Harsh conditions and death threats
“It would have been enormous,” said Damian Kingsbury, professor emeritus at Deakin University in Melbourne and an expert on West Papuan politics.
“He would have had a life that was essentially mobile, like most of his captors, and they would have generally lived in harsh mountainous conditions,” he said. “It gets pretty cold at high altitudes.”
The situation escalated in May 2023, when rebels threatened to kill Mertens if his demands for independence negotiations were not met within two months.
New Zealand authorities responded by saying they were doing all they could to secure a peaceful resolution and Mertens' safe release, but details of the sensitive talks are being kept closely guarded secret.
Then, in February, exactly one year after his capture, TPN-PB announced it would release the pilot in order to protect humanity and human rights. Seven months later, TPN-PB laid out conditions for his release that the Indonesian government “must abide by,” including allowing “open access” for the media.
The rebels' change of tack is likely due to a number of factors, Kingsbury said.
“It took some time for it to become clear to TPN-PB that there was no long-term benefit to keeping him. All they could hope for was that it would seem to have a humanitarian aspect and bring publicity to their cause.”
He also said it was possible that over time Mr Mertens had “humanised” himself to his hostage takers, adding that this was a “fairly common social dynamic” in hostage situations.
“Mertens was given the opportunity to build a relationship, they kept him alive, he speaks Indonesian… he became a person for them.”
On Saturday, after 594 days in captivity, the rebels carried out their plan and Mertens was set free.
A message of hope
As cameras began clicking, a thin, unshaven Mertens sobbed on a video call to his family before donning a dark grey windproof jacket and thanking those who helped secure his release.
“Today I have been released and I am very happy because I will soon be able to go home and see my family,” Mehertens told a news conference in the mining town of Timika.
In a statement, her family said Mertens's time in captivity had been “extremely difficult” and they were “extremely grateful and relieved” to have been released. They thanked the New Zealand and Indonesian authorities for prioritizing peaceful negotiations to keep Mertens safe.
“This has been difficult, but it would have been even harder if we hadn't known how hard everyone is working and what measures are being put in place,” they said.
They thanked Gen. Egeanus Kogoya, the Free Papua Movement's regional commander, and his troops for keeping Mertens in good health and for allowing him to deliver several messages to his family during his captivity.
“Those messages filled our hearts and gave us hope, gave us hope that one day we would see Phil again.”
His family said Mertens had been through a “long and difficult ordeal” and had asked for privacy while he adjusted to life in captivity.
Mertens arrived at Halim Perdanakusuma Air Base in Jakarta just before midnight on Saturday and was received by Indonesian officials and New Zealand diplomats.
He then had a private reunion with his family and spent his first night sleeping in a bed in nearly 600 days. New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he was in “remarkable good health.”
Peters said the negotiations were “tense.” “Our fear was that we might not be successful. Trust is the hardest thing to build in an environment where there is no trust.”
Despair in West Papua
The incident has drawn new attention to resource-rich Papua's long and deadly conflict since it came under Indonesian rule in the 1960s and is widely seen as a sham vote held under UN supervision.
The area where Mertens was held remains extremely dangerous for the West Papuan people, as the TPN-PB regularly launches attacks and engages in skirmishes with Indonesian security forces, who are accused of atrocities against civilians, including the torture and killing of civilians.
The region has also seen a larger, peaceful pro-independence civil movement sparked by Indonesia's violent crackdown on West Papuans, but peaceful acts of civil disobedience by indigenous West Papuans, such as raising the banned “Morning Star” flag, have been met with police and military brutality and lengthy prison sentences.
In 2022, UN human rights experts It called for immediate and unrestricted humanitarian access to the area due to serious concerns over “shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans, including the killings of children, disappearances, torture and mass displacement.”
Indonesia, meanwhile, severely restricts access for foreign journalists and human rights monitors.
Andreas Harsono, Indonesia director at Human Rights Watch, said there was still a lack of information about how the release process worked, but that at this stage the recent negotiations appeared to be peaceful.
He said Indonesian media had reported that Mertens would meet with President Joko Widodo and possibly Defense Minister and president-elect Prabowo Subianto.
“If that is true, it would mean that either President Jokowi or President Prabawo, or both, were involved in preventing Indonesian troops from entering the Nduga area,” Harsono said.
Harsono said New Zealand had played a major role in urging Indonesia to refrain from using force, adding that the hostage crisis had led to Indonesia's militarisation of the region and intensified the suffering of West Papuans.
