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Video has been released of Philip Mark Mehrtens, the pilot who was abducted by separatist fighters in West Papua a year ago. In the video, which Mehrtens says was filmed in December 2023, the New Zealand pilot says he is ‘OK’, and that his captors are ‘treating him well’. A second video was also published, in which Mehrtens asks the New Zealand government for inhalers and English-language books to make his time in captivity more comfortable. Mehrtens was captured in the Indonesian province of Nduga last February, while working as a pilot. His captors say he is being held hostage over secession negotiations with Indonesia, but Indonesia has so far refused the separatists’ demands.
