The kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot in Indonesia’s volatile Papua region is the latest in a series of attention-grabbing attacks by 24-year-old Egianus Kogoya and his faction of Papuan independence fighters.
Separatist rebels in Indonesia’s Papua said Tuesday that a foreign pilot taken hostage last week was alive and well, as they released undated photographs and videos they said showed the New Zealand citizen, amid a group of apparent insurgents, in what appeared to be a forested area.
In 1963, Indonesian forces invaded Papua – like Indonesia, a former Dutch colony – and annexed the region.Only about 1,000 people voted in the U.N.-sponsored referendum in 1969 that locals and activists said was a sham, but the United Nations accepted the result, essentially endorsing Jakarta’s rule