Merdeka: Hostages, Freedom and Flying Pigs in West Papua

by Stephen Hill, Chris Gilbey (Editor)

A pregnant woman who works for the UN is taken hostage by a group of tribal Papuan freedom fighters along with other foreigners and Indonesians. The tribesmen find out that she is pregnant and decide that the baby is a “gift from God” and must be their new Messiah. They plan to keep Martha hostage until the baby is born, and then carry the baby into battle as their mascot. They believe this will make their bows and arrows as powerful as guns and bullets. This takes place in the most remote and dense tropical jungles in the world, in West Papua. The freedom fighters are part of a liberation movement called the OPM.

It's the stuff of fiction but its all true.

Martha was the pregnant United Nations official. Her captors, the OPM, said she would not be released until the UN delivered ‘Merdeka’ or ‘Freedom’ for the West Papuan people. The OPM rebel movement was motivated by the murder, repression, exploitation, and massive human rights abuses perpetrated by the Indonesian military. Hostage negotiations spanned an enormous cultural divide between indigenous jungle people who'd never seen the outside world and the international community. The negotiations involved the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Pope. It became a balancing act to keep the Indonesian military from attacking the OPM, an action that would have led to the deaths of innocent people. Extraordinary intrigues became the hallmark of the negotiations at the highest level of politics in Indonesia. Covert foreign troops were deployed and attackers even pretended to be part of the International Red Cross. The crisis balanced precariously on a knife edge every day.

Stephen Hill was the senior UN official and ambassador to Indonesia at the time. He was responsible for the UN’s role in negotiating release of the hostages and the subsequent aid initiatives.

This book reveals the growing tensions, uncertainty, and life and death struggle experienced by the hostages each day through the lens of the contemporary daily reports that Stephen Hill wrote and transmitted to the UN Security Council never before released.

The hostage drama - iincluding the murder of two Indonesian hostages – is a prism for what happened next in West Papua. After the resolution of the crisis, Stephen Hill conceived and implemented a ‘Flying Pigs Operation’ to replace the livestock the highland villagers’ killed by the military during the crisis – a visionary solution to deliver cultural and physical support for a ravaged community.

Its rare that you read a true story told so lucidly and imperatively, and backed up by scrupulous footnotes and references. Merdeka takes the reader on a journey through to the present – to the 2014 Indonesian Presidential election - and explores what future for indigenous Papuans might hold, given the roiling politics of Indonesia.

Stephen Hill’s credentials are outstanding, but he writes like a novelist, not an academic. The extraordinary personal stories that are recounted demonstrate the integrity and strength of values and culture of the native Papuan tribal people in the face of the worst excesses of globalisation. Martha, the central character of the narrative, says: “For anyone wanting to understand why our hostage drama occurred in the first place, and the current political and human rights situation in West Papua, this book is a must read”.

Martha, the central character of the narrative says: “For anyone wanting to understand why our hostage drama occurred in the first place, and the current political and human rights situation in West Papua, this book is a must read”.

237 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2014

About the author

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