The American tourist who was arrested visiting a remote tribe that has no contact with the outside world and left a can of Diet Coke as an “offering” is a thrill-seeking YouTuber who previously visited the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Influencer Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, who has been branded “idiotic,” traveled for nine hours in a small rubber dinghy with an outboard motor to reach North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean, where tried to get the native people’s attention by blowing a whistle and leaving soda and a coconut as tribute.
North Sentinel Island is home to one of the world’s most isolated tribes, the Sentinelese people, who are all but untouched by outsiders. The last person to visit the island, an American Christian missionary, was killed after just a few days .
Travel within three nautical miles of the island was prohibited by India’s government in 1956, and the territory is demarcated as a tribal reserve.
Polyakov, whose father is of Ukrainian descent, set off for North Sentinel Island at 1 a.m. on March 29, leaving a beach on South Sentinel Island some 19 miles from the regional capital, Port Blair, police said.
Upon reaching the northeastern shore of the island, he used binoculars to watch the beach from the boat in hopes of spotting the tribe, he told police.
But when no one appeared, he waded through the water to the beach where he left the can of Diet Coke and a coconut and waited on the shore for a few minutes in hopes of making contact with an islander.
When no one emerged from the island’s dense forests, Polyakov shot a video on the beach and returned to his boat, waiting for an hour and blowing a whistle to try and lure tribe members out.
After that effort also proved pointless, he set off back to South Sentinel Island, where he was spotted by local fishermen who reported him to the police, according to authorities.
This is not the first reckless journey Polyakov has made, he told police.
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In the past, he traveled to Afghanistan to meet members of the Taliban, posing with automatic weapons and swords borrowed from the Islamist fighters.
He also made a previous voyage to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for a reconnaissance mission, and had studied sea conditions, tides and accessibilityahead of the latest mission, police said.
Little is known about the Sentinelese, who are thought to number between just 100 and 300 people.
They are believed to be hunter-gatherers who use bows and arrows and spears.
Because of their untouched status, they have no immunity to modern diseases, and campaigners fear an outbreak of flu or measles could wipe out one of Earth’s last uncontacted tribes.
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Polyakov has been charged with entering a prohibited zone and faces up to eight years in prison if found guilty, according to police.
His actions were described as “deeply disturbing” by Carolina Pearce, director of the charity Survival International.
“It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic,” she said in a statement on her organization’s website . “This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk.”
The Sentinelese people previously made headlines in 2018 when American missionary John Allen Chau was killed after landing on the island , which he described as “Satan’s last stronghold on Earth.”
On Chau’s first visit, he canoeed to shore with a waterproof Bible and tried to speak with tribe members and offer them gifts, but was met with hostility, he recorded.
During another visit, he described how the islanders laughed at him when he tried to sing to them and speak in their language.
On his final, fateful visit, fishermen Chau paid to take him near the islands saw tribe members carrying Chau’s body across the sand and burying him.
“It’s good news that the man in this latest incident has been arrested, but deeply disturbing that he was reportedly able to get onto the island in the first place,” Pearce said.
“The Indian authorities have a legal responsibility to ensure that the Sentinelese are safe from missionaries, social media influencers, people fishing illegally in their waters and anyone else who may try to make contact with them.”
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