Victor Yeimo – The killing of New Zealand helicopter pilot Glen Malcolm Conning in Alama Village, Mimika, Papua, on Monday August 5 brings back memories of the tragic story of this village in 1996.

The "Lorentz 95 Team" hostage rescue operation was led by Indonesia president elect Prabowo Subianto, who was then the commander of the Army’s Special Forces (Kopassus), and resulted in mass killings, disappearances, people fleeing their homes and the torching of a churches and homes in Bela, Alama and Mapenduma.

A 1997 Jawa Pos report cited one of the hostages, British student Daniel Start, who testified that commandos from the United Kingdom's Special Air Service (SAS) and troops from the infamous private security company Executive Outcome (EO) disguised as international Red Cross officials, along with Kopassus, carried out the attacks from helicopters on these three villages.

A church report said that 20 civilians were killed, five people went missing and 182 houses were burned, including 15 churches, and more than 2,000 residents fled.

These crimes left behind traumatised children who were “born big” witnessing their parents being killed and their houses torched before their eyes.

These memories of oppression left behind a desire for revenge, not just for people like Egianus Kogeya and others who were members of West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) families, but as many as 2,000 or so families of civilian victims.

The attack by a helicopter disguised as the Red Cross was also carried out when the TPNPB group led by Kelly Kwalik, Daniel Kogeya and Silas Kogeya were ready to hand over the hostages in an open field.

The recent killing of helicopter pilot Conning also took place after the commander of the TPNPB Défense Command Area (Kodap) III, General Egianus Kogeya, said he would soon release New Zealand pilot Philip Mark Mehrtens, which the group has held hostage since February last year.

And as of four days after the killing, the TPNPB had still not declared responsibility and has in fact accused the TNI (Indonesian military) of ordering the pilot’s murder in order to thwart the release of Mehrtens. And conversely, the TNI accused the TPNPB of being the culprit.

So if it is neither the TNI or the TPNPB, can the perpetrators be reasonably suspected to be the victims who were traumatized by the brutality of the 1996 operation in Alama Village? This of course needs to be investigated.

It we calculate the political losses faced by the two parties, the TPNPB would be the most disadvantaged and there would be no political gain from this shooting. So, it is quite impossible that a TPNPB command carried this out. The evidence being that Mehrtens was never shot but secured and was to be released by the TPNPB in order to remove him from the threat of being killed by the TNI which has repeatedly targeted the pilot by dropping bombs on his hiding place.

The TNI and the state are very interested in reinforcing the bad image of the OPM (Free Papua Movement) and the TPNPB as terrorists in the eyes of the world. After nearly two years the Indonesian operation to free Mehrtens has failed at a time when Indonesia wants to gain support from the Pacific, especially New Zealand.

The announcement by Egianus Kogeya of the imminent release of Mehrtens, if it occurs, will ruin the image of the TNI and the state troops that have an interest in destroying the image of the struggle of the Papuan people in international forums, such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) which will be holding a leadership meeting on August 26-30.

Can we suspect that this shooting was intended to kill the good intentions of the TPNPB in releasing Mehrtens and the struggle of the Papuan people? If true, then this could be a strategy that in intelligence circles is called a "false flag" operation.

This is a strategy of attacking or committing heinous actions against civilians in order to direct accusations against an opponent as the perpetrator. The aim is to discredit an enemy, trigger a public or military response against an enemy and to obtain strategic or political gain.

There is also the term "proxy war". In this scenario, a party is not directly involved in acts of violence but uses a third party, or "proxy", to achieve their goals. A proxy war is often used to avoid direct involvement, reduce the risk for the main party, and to maintain deniability (reasonable denial).

If the TPNPB does not know anything about this murder, then the TNI could have used a third party, namely a paid group disguised as the TPNPB. Of course this is only a suspicion, but in the world of intelligence, operations like this are commonly applied.

Apart from whoever should be proven guilty for all the bloody conflicts in West Papua, colonialism and capitalism, namely Indonesia and PT Freeport, want to maintain Papua as a land of blood without any resolution. The land of Papua is indeed an arena of business for the TNI, the Indonesian Police (Polri) and the bureaucratic elite capitalists in Jakarta. Both want the conflict to be maintained in the interests of business.

Only 2,971,340 indigenous Papuans remain out of a population of 5.4 million according to National Statistics Agency (BPS) data for 2022. The number of non-Papuan is already greater with a growth of 6.39 percent of newcomers per year in the six provinces of Papua. From city to villages, the influx of migrants with the support of companies and the military dominates all productive sectors.

Meanwhile customary forests, which are the last fortresses of the earth from the threat of global warming, are also under threat. Of the 34.3 million hectares of primary forests in the land of Papua, 793,623 hectares were cleared in 2021-2022 alone.

Within a period of two months (January-February 2024), the Pusaka Foundation found that 765 hectares of forests were cleared in Papua. According to Greenpeace data, around 12.9 million hectares of Papua forest will be converted by companies furnished with Indonesian permits.

So, should the Papua people be denied their rights by creating a bad image of their national struggle? I think that like the Palestinian struggle under the power of the imperialist media, that's what the Papua people are facing today.

It is true when Malcolm X said: "The media is the most powerful entity in the world. They have the power to make innocent people guilty and make guilty people innocent".

All the truths of the Papuan nation’s struggle are being covered up by the propaganda and agitation of the invaders.

-- Victor Yeimo is the KNPB international spokesperson

[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Pembunuhan Pilot Glen dan Operasi Bela-Alama 1996".]

Source: https://suarapapua.com/2024/08/08/pembunuhan-pilot-glen-dan-operasi-bela-alama-1996/