The Most Dangerous Island in the World
Posted on Saturday, March 21, 2020
Author: Aska Makori
Outsiders are banned from this island
Some call it the death island. It is believed that once you step foot in this island, you will never come out. There are so many myths surrounding this place, with some stating that the tribe inhabiting the island are cannibals and consume any foreigner that dares visit them. Other's state that the inhabitants would use you for rituals; no one knows which myth to believe. One fact stands out though; The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Act of 1956 prohibits travel to the island. This means that no one is allowed to visit the island.
Welcome to North Sentinel Island, one of the many places in the world where civilization has not reached. The Island is occupied by Sentinelese people who are related to other indigenous groups in the Andaman Islands, a chain of islands in India’s Bay of Bengal. They’ve been isolated for long enough that other Andaman groups, like the Onge and the Jarawa, can’t understand their language.
The world's attention was drawn after the death of an American tourist who illegally visited the isolated Island. In 2018, John Allen Chau, a christian missionary visited the island with hopes of sharing the gospel with the inhabitants. It's alleged that they chased him away twice but when he came ashore a third time, they killed him and buried his body in the beach. The Indian government called off the search for his body, citing danger for the search party and the island inhabitants themselves.
John Allan Chau was killed by the inhabitants
The exact number of inhabitants is unknown. According to a 2011 census effort, and based on anthropologists’ estimates of how many people the island could support, there are probably somewhere between 80 and 150 people on North Sentinel Island, although it could be as many as 500 or as few as 15. The sentinel tribe is believed to be violent and uncivilized for reasons that date back to centuries ago when the British decided to declare the island a part of the British Colony. When a Royal Navy officer named Maurice Vidal Portman took charge of the Andaman and Nicobar colony, he invaded the island and kidnapped a family of six; an elderly couple and their four children. The parents later died of a foreign illness that the children also contacted. For an unknown reason, Portman saw it wise to return the sick children back to the Island where they spread the illness. The later murder of Portman by the inhabitants led the British to retreat from the Island and since then, no intruders were welcomed.
A 2006 analysis from the Indian government following the death of two fishermen on the island concluded that the group does not practice cannibalism. It is right to believe that the sentinelese are not violent, just reserved. Visitors to the island are met with arrows as a message of their unwanted presence and those who persist are killed.
The Sentinelese have isolated themselves from the rest of the world for thousands of years. They have no education or knowledge of modernization. Due to their uncivilized nature, lack of immunization and knowledge of ailments, the government of India has decided to ban everyone from the island in order to prevent the resident tribespeople from contracting diseases to which they have no immunity. The area is patrolled by the Indian navy.
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