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John Chau had "a very meticulous plan to camouflage his expedition as a fishery," police said.
On Instagram, John Chau appeared as a carefree young adventurer – climbing summits and exploring the jungle. But in reality, the One missionary had a murderous obsession with an isolated tribe in India, he had read for the first time in his adolescence.
Chau spent years planning an illegal trip to the remote North Sentinel Island to convert his inhabitants to Christianity. The islanders have long resisted violently foreigners, so he led a secret mission on the protected island this month. Shortly after her arrival, the tribe killed her and the police announced that she had still not recovered her body.
The death of the latter, a 26-year-old former missionary from Washington State – who has violated many laws and endangered the health of Indigenous peoples – sparked an international outcry, a heated debate over protection of tribal communities stigations of Indian authorities. It also prompted the American evangelical community to question whether Chau was a martyr, a fool or was afflicted by a complex of messiahs.
"My God, I do not want to die," Chau scribbled in his diary while sitting in a fishing boat off the coast of the island where the residents of the North Sentinels live, shortly before his death. "WHO WILL TAKE MY PLACE IF I DO IT?"
Chau, casual and friendly, seemed to be any other backpacker when he showed up at Remco Snoeij Dive Shop in 2016 on Havelock Island – in the chain of Andaman and Nicobar Indian Islands – and said he wanted to learn how to dive.
Chau's time on the island, a refuge for divers, was largely innocuous. He stayed in a house called Scubaluv, which was filled with "geckos chatting"; he swam with parrot fish and took pictures of blue coral for his Instagram account, which had 17,000 followers.
Yet, Snoeij remembered that Chau seemed to be of close interest to the North Sentinelese tribe, who lived a stone age existence on a nearby island, protected by an area of ?? 3 miles exclusion imposed by the Indian government. The tribe has long resisted outside human contact; When Indian helicopters flew over the 2004 tsunami, members of the tribe fired arrows and fired spears.
Snoeij told Chau that the island was forbidden, but during dive excursions, he entertained the American with a local tradition – about the two fishermen who were fishing. were returned to the island in 2006 and were strangled by islanders about rumors that the Japanese army buried gold there during the Second World War.
"He shared a keen interest in research and knowledge of their lives," Snoeij said. . "It must have reached an agreement."
What the police believe now is that Chau was on a reconnaissance mission. At least once, he went to the area to learn how to bypbad military patrols and reach the island.
Chau had "a very meticulous plan to camouflage his expedition as a fishery," said Dependra Pathak, chief police officer for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Son of a doctor who had fled China during the Cultural Revolution, Chau fascinated with the outdoors since he pulled out a dusty copy of "Robinson Crusoe" from his father's library while He was a kid, he told an online journal about adventures in the wild. He then read the novel "The Sign of the Beaver", which tells of a boy left alone and overseeing the log cabin of his family with the help of a Native American friend.
This book "inspired my brother and I to paint our faces with wild blackberry juice and to walk in our garden with bows and spears, we created sticks," said Chau.
In an email, Chau's father, Patrick, declined to comment, claiming that the family needed peace.
He graduated in 2014 in the field of sports medicine at the Oral University Roberts, who has also volunteered for football programs in Iraq and South Africa, has lived in a cabin for three summers in the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California; was hospitalized after being bitten by a rattlesnake.
A friend, John Middleton Ramsey, 22, remembers that in 2016, Chau had stayed with him in Bellingham, in the state of Washington, and that the island of Andaman Sea was well in his mind, Chau confided that he avoided romantic attachments because of his intended mission.
"He knew the dangers of this place," said Ramsey. "He did not want hearts to break if something went wrong, he was very aware of what he was doing, and he also knew that it was not entirely legal."
That year, Chau joined with all nations. , a missionary group based in Kansas City, Missouri, sending Christian missionaries to 40 countries. The group provided her with training and support, according to Mary Ho, her international leader. She was surprised by the "sweet, soft-spoken young man" who had a "radical call" to find "unreached groups".
"You can see that every decision he made, every step he's made since then was motivated by his desire to be part of the North Sentinel people," Ho said. planned to live there for years and hoped to learn their language.
Ho said that the group was aware that Chau had gone to India as a tourist without the required visa for his missionary because missionary visas "are not easy to find." [19659003] Brahma Chellaney, a professor at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said Mr. Chau had violated the laws in force, but the Indian authorities had clearly stated the opposite. Cultural norms.
"He has repeatedly penetrated this island and they have lost patience," said Chellaney. "There is faith and there is a mental illness … He did not understand the distinction between being mad and doing something completely idiotic".
Chau's diary, which his family provided to The Washington Post, is an adventure. novels that he read once. He arrived in Andamans on October 16 and paid the fishermen to take him by boat to the island by night on November 14, thus avoiding patrol lights en route. When the sun rose, Chau approached the tribe. The women started "looing and chatting," he wrote, and he was confronted with men armed with bows and arrows. "My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you," he shouted before retiring.
On the second day, he took a kayak tour on the island and tried to offer the tribe small gifts: fish, scissors, cordon and safety pins. A man in white with a crown, possibly made of flowers, shouted to him. He responded by singing "songs of worship and hymns" and the tribe is you. A miner shot him an arrow, piercing his waterproof Bible. Chau escaped on foot through the mangroves.
"Lord, is this island the last fortress of Satan where no one has heard or even had a chance to hear your name?" he wrote.
On the third day, he was convinced that he was going to die.
"Watching the sunset and it's nice – crying a bit … wondering if it will be the last sunset, I see," wrote. He asked the fishermen to drop him on the beach. They came back the next day and saw members of the tribe dragging Chau's body
These fishermen were arrested, as was a friend of Chau who helped organize the cruise. The police still have no strategy to recover his body or face the inhabitants of the island, said Pathak.
Chau's friends in the islands are still afflicted and mystified by the whole episode.
"He definitely lost his mind," Snoeij said. "But ask any adventurer, you must lose your head a little, otherwise you will not do it."
(With the exception of the title, this story was not published by NDTV staff and was published in a syndicated feed.)
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