Jakarta- New Zealand pilot Philip Mark Mehrtens was finally released after 1.5 years of being held hostage by the Papuan armed criminal group (KKB) led by Egianus Kogoya. Mehrtens was released on Saturday (21/9/2024) after being held hostage since February 7, 2023. He was kidnapped at the Paro District Airport, Nduga Regency, Papua Mountains.
Head of Operations for the Cartenz Peace Task Force 2024, Brigadier General Faizal Ramadhani revealed that the success of the joint TNI-Polri and Cartenz Peace Task Force team in efforts to free Mehrtens prioritized soft approach efforts.
The Cartenz Peace Task Force chose the Soft Approach strategy because Papuan society is a society that upholds customs and kinship. These are the main values of Papuan society, so the first thing the Task Force needs to do is identify the kinship relations of the KKB.
“A soft approach is important to minimize casualties among officers, civilians, and at the same time maintain the safety of Pilot Philip,” Brigadier General Faizal told reporters on Sunday (22/09).
He explained that from the beginning of the release efforts, the Cartenz Peace Task Force had carried out an identification process for the KKB led by Egianus Kogoya. The Task Force conducted profiling regarding the kinship of the KKB members with figures in Papua.
“Then we conducted a traditional profiling, who they are, where they are, where their father is from, where their mother is from, and this is important identification. So from there we can understand. So we can find out who might be able to talk to to become a negotiating team with Egianus’ group,” he explained.
After identifying the relationship, his party then selected a number of figures to carry out a soft approach to the KKB. Among these figures are the Timika Police Chief AKBP I Komang Budiartha who had served as the Nduga Police Chief and the former Acting Nduga Regent Edison Gwijangge. Both are considered figures who are able to establish relationships and become negotiators for the Cartenz Peace Task Force with the KKB in an effort to free Mehrtens.
“They are quite capable of mingling with the community and are identified by the KKB as having quite good kinship relationships,” he said.
Faizal added that this soft approach strategy is basically Faizal’s way of practicing his dissertation when he was pursuing a doctoral degree. In his dissertation entitled ‘Policing in Handling Communal Conflicts with a Local Wisdom Approach’, Faizal believes that local wisdom can be a way to resolve conflicts.
“The basic grand theory is there (dissertation). But the most important thing is actually that to solve the problem we have to focus and go directly to Papua. We have to understand because Papua is very large, then from one region to another it turns out there are many tribes, many languages, many things that cannot be generalized immediately,” he explained.
He is of the view that currently the tendency in solving problems in Papua is that many parties always generalize. So the initial weakness was that they often concluded the problems in Papua from outside Papua. “In fact, they should be involved (directly involved) in Papua, because each problem in the Papua region is specific,” he said.
Although Philip Mark Mehrtens has now been successfully released, Brigadier General Faizal assessed that in principle the Cartenz Peace Task Force cannot stand alone in resolving all the problems in Papua. The reason is, the Cartenz Peace Task Force is a police operation with a law enforcement strategy, so it is necessary to coordinate and collaborate with other stakeholders in efforts to resolve problems in Papua.
“That has actually been done by Damai Cartenz, not only do we work together with TNI friends or regional friends, but we also work together with local governments, we work together with traditional leaders, church leaders. Because it is impossible to do it alone, it certainly cannot succeed,” said Faizal.
