News about Benny Wenda

Last week, Phillip Mehrtens (left, inset), a pilot for Indonesian aviation company Susu Air, was kidnapped by the rebels who stormed his single-engine plane after landing on a narrow runway in the remote Papua region of Indonesia (bottom right). Mr Mehrtens was arrested by the West Papua Liberation Army, the militant arm of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), before setting fire to his plane (top right, inset) on the runway in Paro in the remote Nduga district on February 7. Now, a video of the rebels surrounding Mr Mehrtens, who is thought to be married with a young child, has surfaced, and he is armed with rifles, spears, and arrows. The rebels warned Mr Mehrtens, from Christchurch,'would die here' as 'the majority of us,' if the Indonesian army attempted to rescue him, in a chilling video.

As they published chilling photos to show he's still alive, a rebel group behind the kidnapping of Phillip Mehrtens, a former Jetstar pilot from New Zealand, has released a list of demands for his release. Fighters from a faction of the West Papua Liberation Army escorted the pilot of Susi Air shortly after touching down in the remote West Papuan province of Nguda on February 7. They have given him reassurances concerning his wellbeing while still requesting complete West Papuan independence from Indonesia in order to guarantee his release.

Jennifer Robinson, 41, and Keina Yoshida, 37, is a must read for anyone left wondering how women are still being silenced in 2023. Their credentials are impressive. Yoshida works in international human rights and is a legal advisor for the Centre for Reproductive Rights, while Robinson, an Australian, represented exiled West Papuan Prime Minister Benny Wenda while she was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford (he works for him pro bono). She defended Amber Heard in the libel case brought against his ex-wife and The Sun in 2020, prompting Heard to call Robinson 'the smartest person in the room.' Robinson's discovery that she is as well connected as she is clever - Amal and George Clooney, two close friends - draws more attention than she expects, but not all of it positive.