Saying Ciao to Chau

Increasingly, it seems highly unlikely that the mortal remains of John Alan Chau will ever be repatriated to the United States.

Chau was the 26-year-old missionary who illegally invaded North Sentinel Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Island chain east of India in the Bay of Bengal, then was killed while trespassing by the Stone Age tribe members who are thought to have resided there for 60,000 years.

John Allen Chau

So far, police have arrested 7 people, including the 6 fishermen who ferried him to North Sentinel Island.

Chau still didn’t act alone.

Dependra Pathak, Andaman Director General of Police, said “We are investigating the role of at least two Americans, a man and a woman, who met with the man who went to the island. These other two, who have since left the country, were reportedly into evangelical activities and encouraged him to visit the island.”

Though he neither identified them or their organization by name, Police Director Pathak said the two Americans who had “local mobile numbers,” were traced by police investigators through calls made to Chau’s cell phone.

In a press release about John Allen Chau’s death, All Nations accepted responsibility for Chau’s actions, admitted that he was sent by them, and wrote in part that they were “mourning the reported death of one of its missionaries,” and that “he joined All Nations as a missionary in 2017 and trained at its North American headquarters in Kansas City, MO.” All-Nations-Nov-21-2018-News-Release2-1

That admission of guilt by All Nations, along with Chau’s journal entries detailing his actions, may very well provide sufficient evidence for a competent court of jurisdiction to levy charges against the organization and/or certain people for possible violation of national Indian law, and perhaps International law.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narindra Modi’s government had lifted Restricted Area Permits (RAP) on 29 inhabited “protected islands” – including North Sentinel Island – where uncontacted and aboriginal tribes resided, for for the purpose of promoting tourism and travel. The RAP required foreigners to obtain special permits to visit those Andaman and Nicobar islands, and were valid only for daylight visits. Separate approvals are still required for visiting Reserved forests, wildlife sanctuaries, and tribal reserves.

Police have said that Chau had violated at least four even more strict laws under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribes (PAT) Law, and the Indian Forests Act, and failed to report his stay in the Andamans to the local Foreigner Regional Registration Office, which handles immigration matters.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Act prohibits any approach closer than five nautical miles of North Sentinel Island.

The Act also requires a visitor to possess a “pass” to venture onto any of the restricted areas – including North Sentinel Island – which is granted only by the Deputy Commissioner of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Even if someone holds a pass, they are barred by law from collecting or carrying any forest produce, books, maps, photographs, films religious or scientific artifacts to and from those areas. They are also not allowed to introduce substances like weapons, drugs or any intoxicants into those areas.

As fervent as one may feel about their faith, it hardly gives one any right to violate laws, or to intrude upon others’ rights and lives.

Widely considered direct descendants of the first humans to have ever departed North Africa as civilization began, the Sentinelese are called an “uncontacted” people precisely because they are practically unknown in human history. Save for the few, sparse interactions historically, there is no known record of them – in any form – which has ever existed. No civilized human being has ever known their language. Their language is known only to them, has never been studied, much less recorded in any way, and no known or written language has emerged from them, or even references them.

They are a hunter-gatherer type people who – to the best of Human knowledge – have never initiated cultivation of any form of agricultural product on their isolated tropical island paradise, nor have they domesticated or attempted domestication of any animals whatsoever. Neither have they any rudimentary form of the wheel, much less an axle, nor use any fundamental form of money.

Suffice it to say, nothing is known about their genetics, except that it’s widely conjectured that because of their extreme isolation, they have no natural immunity to any diseases – including the common cold – which could conceivably be a death sentence to them.

Those things we know, or surmise, only by the extremely rare and limited interactions which have ever occurred with them over a period of 200 years, or more. They are, by every measure, the exemplary definition of Stone Age people. Every initial hallmark of civilization – from agricultural and animal domestication, to money and organized government, including any form of art, religion, or communication – is, as far as we know, wholly, fully, totally, completely, and utterly absent.

So, into that ignorantly uncivilized, utterly wild, savage alien world comes an American “adventurer” from Vancouver, Washington by way of Alabama and Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, via All Nations – a missionary school, of sorts, in Kansas City, Missouri – which, according to their website, is “an international Christian missions training and sending organization,” which John Allen Chau also attended.

Chau had apparently said, or written, that he wanted to translate the Bible into the language of the North Sentinel Islanders, and for him to imagine that he could even start, is so preposterously absurd that it defies all logic. No civilized human being has ever known their language, and furthermore, they have no known alphabet, and are most certainly illiterate. They’re a Stone Age tribe, for heaven’s sake!

And it probably never occurred to John Allen Chau to speak with Wycliffe Bible Translators, a reputable Christian missionary organization founded in 1942 upon that very principle, which is “an interdenominational, non-sectarian, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, non-profit mission organization, and a charter member of the ECFA,” the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

Chau was hardly one of the Sentinelese in any way. The ONLY similarities between John Allen Chau and the Sentinelese, is that they are both human.

And that’s exactly where it begins, and ends.