John Allen Chau: why it is "almost impossible" to find the body of the deceased American after coming into contact with an isolated tribe | BBC | World | New



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They saw them from a distance and decided to leave

The Indian authorities maintained a "face-to-face" tension with the isolated tribe of the island Sentinel del Norte where the It is thought that the young man was killed. American John Allen Chau .

The Indian Government sent a police unit to the isolated island part of the Indian Ocean Archipelago Andaman and Nicobar but the agents stopped the boat . 400 meters from the coast.

Using binoculars, they saw what was waiting for them on the beach: men armed with bows and arrows, weapons that would have been used to kill Chau explained CEO Dependra Pathak

of the archipelago police "They stayed to watch us and we watched them," Pathak told AFP.

The ship decided to leave to avoid a confrontation.

Chau on an island foreign to modern life and guarded by a community that generally does not welcome foreigners very well.

A First Step

The Aborigines seemed to "watch" something and the police think it might be the young American's body.

Several local fishermen who helped Chau to visit the island, whose entry is forbidden, they say they saw the tribe burying the body of the man 26 years old on the beach.

Chau wanted to contact the tribe to spread Christianity, according to the notes he had left before leaving and

Fishermen comment on what happened with Chau to a friend that the young man had in the area and he was the one who gave the alarm to the family. His relatives in turn contacted the US consulate.

"We have mapped the area with the help of these fishermen, we have not seen the body yet, but we know more or less about the area where we think it is. He was buried". the chief of the 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 aboriginals, as provided by his law .

Caution

To bring this rapprochement to a successful conclusion, the Indian government has called on experts not to disturb the tribe, one of the last "disconnected" from the outside world, and to know what they are doing. She can cope.

The Tribe of the Island Sentinel 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-in-chief of the BBC in Delhi.

Sentinels have long attacked people outside their community. Two fishermen who ended up on the coast of the island were killed.

A week after his death, the bodies of two Indians were hanged on bamboo piles facing the sea.

"He was like a scarecrow," the police chief said in statements to the AFP agency.

The authorities badyze this case while asking anthropologists to know the type of behavior of this tribe.

"We try to understand group psychology", explained Path

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, they must take the utmost precautions," said TNPandit, an anthropologist who dressed the island several years ago in front of New York. Times.

Lack of information

Lack of information about this tribe, which is supposed to be the last The last descendants of the first humans to arrive in Asia constitute one of the greatest difficulties.

"We have no idea of ​​their communication systems, their history and their culture, how we can get closer," AFP Anup Kapoor, an anthropologist at the University of New York, told AFP. Delhi.

According to Kapoor, we only know "that they were killed and persecuted by the British and the Japanese": "They hate all who wear the uniform."

In this situation, some people ask not to even try to find the body of Chau .

"I do not think that there is a sure way to recover the body without endangering both the sentinels and those who will try (recover the body)," said Sophie Grig, senior researcher of the organization Survival International, which defends the rights of these types of communities.

The anthropologist of the University of Delhi is also clear: "That they are as they are (…) Do not disturb them, because we can only ensure that & # 39; They become more aggressive ".

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