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They saw them from a distance and decided to leave.
Indian authorities have maintained a "face-to-face" tension with the isolated tribe of the North Sentinel Island, where it is believed that the young American John Allen Chau was killed.
The Indian government sent a police unit to the remote Island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Archipelago of the Indian Ocean, but the agents stopped the boat about 400 meters from the coast .
With the aid of binoculars, they saw what was waiting for them on the beach: men armed with bows and arrows, The weapons that allegedly served to kill Chau, explained the director general of the archipelago police, Dependra Pathak.
"They stayed to watch us and we watched them," Pathak told AFP.
The boat decided to leave to avoid a confrontation.
This first approach shows the difficulty of recovering Chau's body on an island foreign to modern life and in police custody. The First Step
The Aborigines seemed to "watch" something, and police officers believe it may have been the Young American Corps.
Several local fishermen who helped Chau reach the island, whose entry is prohibited, claimed to have seen the tribe burying the 26-year-old man's body on the beach.
[19659003] On October 21, @johnachau posted on Instagram that he was visiting the region | INSTAGRAM / JOHN CHAU
Chau wanted to contact the tribe to spread Christianity, according to the notes he left before leaving and which were broadcast by the local press.
The fishermen commented on what had happened with Chau to the friend that the young man had in the area, and that was who gave the alarm to the family. His relatives in turn contacted the US consulate.
"We mapped the area with the help of these fishermen, we have not seen the body yet, but we know more or less the area where he was buried," the chief noted. regional police.
The Indian government is now faced with a complex dilemma: how to recover the boy's body and determine what happened, while protecting the culture of the aborigines, in accordance with his law
Warning
To carry out this rapprochement, the Indian government asked the help of experts not to disturb the tribe, one of the last people "out of touch" with the outside the world and find out what they can do.
The Sentinel Islands tribe is a mystery. We do not know what language they speak or how much they speak.
It is estimated that there are only 50 to 150 people on the island, whose visit is illegal because of the risk of contamination of the tribe by foreign diseases.
"Without immunity, any virus could kill the entire tribe," said Ayeshea Perera, editor of the BBC in Delhi.
Sentineleses perpetrated attacks on persons outside their community. Two fishermen who ended up on the coast of the island were killed.
One week after his death, the bodies of two Indians were hanged on bamboo stakes facing the sea.
"He was like a scarecrow", the chief of police recalled, in statements at the AFP agency.
The authorities badyze this case while asking anthropologists to know the type of behavior of this tribe.
"We try to understand the psychology of the group," said Pathak.
Some members of the guard tribe in this 2005 photograph | CHRISTIAN CARON – CREATIVE COMMUNES A-NC-SA
Experts call for caution and some believe that the recovery of the body is an "almost impossible" task.
"You can not send the armed forces and take the body, it has to work with the utmost care," said TNPandit, an anthropologist who visited the island years ago, speaking at New York Times.
Lack of information [19659003] The lack of information on this tribe, which would be the last descendant of the first humans to arrive in Asia, is one of the greatest difficulties.
"We have no idea of their communication systems, their history or culture, nor how we can get close to them," AFP Anup Kapoor, an anthropologist, told AFP. University of Delhi.
There are few images of the tribe | SURVIVAL INTERNATIONAL
According to Kapoor, we only know that they were "killed and persecuted by the British and the Japanese".
"They hate people in uniform," he says.
In this situation Some people ask not to even try to go through Chau's body.
"I do not think there is a safe way to recover the body without endangering sentinels like those who will try it (recovering the body)," said Sophie Grig, senior researcher at the organization Survival International, which defends the rights of such communities.
The anthropologist at the University of Delhi is also clear: "What they are as they are (…) Do not bother them because the only thing we will have is that They become more aggressive. "
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