US not pursuing action against Sentinelese tribe

New York: The US is not pursuing action against the Sentinelese tribe members who killed an American missionary trying to enter their forbidden island, according to the top State Department official for religious freedom. “The US government has not asked or pursued any sort of sanctions that the Indian government would take against the tribal people in this case,” said Samuel Brownback, the Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, on Thursday. “It’s a tragic situation and a tragic case of what’s happened, but that’s not something that’s been asked,” he said, answering a reporter’s question during a news video conference if he would require the Indian government to take action against the Sentinelese tribe or recommend US sanctions on them.

American fundamentalist Christian missionary John Allen Chau was killed in November by tribespeople when he illegally went to the North Sentinel Island in the Andamans to convert them. The Sentinelese do not allow outsiders on their island and kill visitors. The Indian government also does not permit visits to the island in deference to their desire to be isolated and also to protect their fragile immune systems from diseases, the simplest of which could be deadly to them. Officials said Chau was most likely killed by arrows. He had also written in a journal that a tribesperson shot an arrow into his bible on an earlier attempt to visit the island. His body has not been recovered and fishermen who had taken him to a point near the island from where he approached it on a kayak said that later they saw some tribespeople dragging his body on the beach. (IANS)

Also Read: The Man who Survived Befriending the Isolated Sentinelese Tribe for Decades