{"id":52971,"date":"2023-02-27T10:52:17","date_gmt":"2023-02-27T01:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/feb\/27\/png-hostage-professer-bryce-barker-kidnapping-hela-province-governor-papua-new-guinea"},"modified":"2023-02-27T10:52:17","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T01:52:17","slug":"papua-new-guinea-hostage-taking-a-spur-of-the-moment-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=52971","title":{"rendered":"Papua New Guinea hostage taking a \u2018spur of the moment decision\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gang who captured Prof Bryce Barker and his research team wanted compensation after two members shot at logging site<\/p>\n<p>The decision to take the Australian-based New Zealand archaeologist Prof Bryce Barker and his research team hostage near remote Mount Bosavi in Papua New Guinea was a \u201cspur of the moment\u201d decision by their captors, two of whom had been shot in an earlier encounter with security guards at a logging site.<\/p>\n<p>The governor of Hela province, Philip Undialu, said his team had only been able to begin negotiations with the captors \u2013 a criminal gang of about 20 \u201crunners\u201d moving guns and drugs across New Guinea \u2013 once they had moved the hostages into an area with mobile phone coverage.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2023\/feb\/27\/png-hostage-professer-bryce-barker-kidnapping-hela-province-governor-papua-new-guinea\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gang who captured Prof Bryce Barker and his research team wanted compensation after two members shot at logging siteThe decision to take the Australian-based New Zealand archaeologist Prof Bryce Barker and his research team hostage near remote Mount Bo&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3608,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,56,267],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-new-zealand","category-papua-new-guinea"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3608"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52972,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52971\/revisions\/52972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}