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Separatist rebels in Indonesia’s restive easternmost region of Papua have shot dead an American pilot and set a civilian plane on fire, in what a spokesperson for a local militant group described as a “message” to the US and Indonesian governments.
Sebby Sambom, a spokesperson for the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), named the pilot as Nicholas F Gosselin and said separatist fighters had set his plane on fire after it landed in the Yahukimo region of Highland Papua province.
He said the aircraft had been “frequently dropping Indonesian military personnel and violating the TPNPB’s ultimatum”.
A low-level battle for independence from Indonesia has long raged in the resource-rich western half of Papua, where attacks by independence fighters have grown deadlier and more frequent as they have procured better weaponry.
Yusuf Sutejo, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s joint police-military operations in Papua, confirmed that a plane with an American pilot carrying seven passengers had been found burned at an airport in Yahukimo, but he could not confirm whether it had been attacked by rebels or whether the pilot had been killed. All the passengers were Papuans, he said.
Why is there unrest in West Papua?
ShowThe Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua share an island with Papua New Guinea, and its indigenous population has been engaged with a low-level insurgency with Indonesia for about half a century.
After the departure of Dutch colonisers, and disagreement between Papuans, the Netherlands, and Indonesia, the United Nations sponsored a treaty appointing Indonesia as temporary administrator.
In 1969 a UN resolution affirmed the so-called “Act of Free Choice”– a referendum which saw 1,026 hand-picked West Papuans vote to remain with Indonesia, but which has been repeatedly dismissed by international observers as unrepresentative and coerced.
Indonesia maintains the regions have always been Indonesian and the resolution simply affirmed its sovereignty.
A guerrilla separatist movement grew and violence has continued ever since, with claims more than half a million West Papuan people have been killed, as well as countless arrested and injured, and villages destroyed. Indonesia is regularly accused of human rights abuses, which it denies.
In recent years the West Papua cause has gained increased support from regional neighbours, including Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands, but a 2017 independence petition – signed by 1.8 million West Papuans and smuggled out of the country to the UN’s decolonisation committee – was rebuffed as outside its mandate.
Sebby said the attack in the Balinggama district of Yahukimo was a message to the Indonesian and US government for “failing to address the root causes of the conflict in Papua between the Indonesian military and the West Papua National Liberation Army”. He said rebels would start conducting attacks if Indonesia kept allowing civilian aircraft to enter rebel-controlled red zones of Papua.
Rebels carried guns and axes and raised the Morning Star flag, a symbol of independence, while announcing the attack, according to a video sent by TPNPB.
The US embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Indonesia’s transportation ministry said the plane had carried one pilot and seven passengers and had flown to Yahukimo from Wamena, another city in Highland Papua.
It said communications had ceased after the plane landed. The aircraft is owned by the airline operator PT AMA, whose planes carry food, fuel and mail to remote villages in Papua, according to its website. PT AMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In February 2023, Papuan rebels kidnapped a New Zealand pilot, Phillip Mehrtens, after he landed a small commercial plane in the remote, mountainous area of Nduga in Highland Papu. They freed him in September 2024.
