Don’t be angry if I get killed: American wrote before going to island
NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: A day before he was killed by the protected Sentinelese tribe, 26-year-old John Allen Chau set foot illegally on the North Sentinel Island for the first time with gifts and was attacked by a “kid” after he came in contact with a group of indigenous people, according to his journal that Hindustan Times has accessed.
The US national was shot with an arrow, which pierced his Bible, when he came face to face with the reclusive tribespeople, who do not allow outsiders on their island and attack strangers, according to the journal recovered by the police.
“They left me alive,” wrote Chau, who had to swim almost a mile back to the boat waiting for him. Police have arrested five fishermen, a friend of Chau and a local tourist guide for helping him.
Officials recovered the journal from the possession of the fishermen.
“Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed,” he wrote after his first trip to the island. Giving details of his encounter with the Sentinelese people in the journal entry dated November 16, Chau talked about a successful rendezvous “last night with friends”.
As their boat approached the island, Chau thought “God himself was shielding us from the Coast Guard and navy ship patrols.”
When he reached the island on the morning of November 15, he wrote that the islanders spotted him and blocked his exit. He gave them gifts but was fired upon — “it was metal, thin but very sharp. I stumbled back and I was yelling at the kid for shooting me,” his journal said.
Chau is believed to have chronicled his experience before making his last trip to the island the next day. The exact sequence of events after that is not known.
The fishermen, who were allegedly bribed by Chau and took him close to the island, saw the tribespeople dragging his body on the beach and burying his remains on November 17. Chau, thought to be an evangelist, was possibly killed with arrows, police said.
Authorities have decided to contact anthropologists to devise a strategy to recover Chau’s body after two days of search.
“I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language as Revelations 7:9-10 states,” he wrote, referring to the apocalyptic final book of the Bible’s New Testament. “God, I don’t want to die.”
North Sentinel is estimated to have about 60 Sentinelese people, who survive by hunting, fishing and collecting wild plants. The exact population, however, is not known.
The access to North Sentinel Island and its buffer zone is strictly restricted under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation), 1956, and Regulations under Indian Forest Act, 1927.
C Raghu, the head of the Anthropological Survey of India’s regional office in Port Blair, said, “Chau violated law and risked his life. Even we, who have studied the Sentinelese for decades, do not dare to venture there.”
In a message posted on Chau’s purported Instagram page, his family said it forgave “those reportedly responsible for his death” and requested “the release of those friends he had in the Andaman Island.”
“Words cannot express the sadness we have experienced about this report. He was a beloved son, brother, uncle and best friend to us,” the message said, adding that “he had nothing but love for the Sentinelese people”.
Though the family’s post said Chau was a “Christian missionary” to some, senior officials of the home ministry said on the condition of anonymity that he was more of an adventurer than an evangelist.
Right-wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has demanded a probe to ascertain whether Chau was a Christian missionary on a campaign to convert the tribespeople.