By Nicole Chavez, CNN
Earlier this week a U.S. missionary, John Chau, left for a forbidden North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal to try to convert the island's residents to Christianity. It is illegal to travel to the island because the tribe living there, the Sentinelese, are so isolated that they could be killed from outside disease. The Sentinelese are also known to be very aggressive to outsiders and have killed people coming onto the island. Sadly, that is exactly what happened to Chau. But the problem now is that his body needs to be recovered from the island to protect the tribe from disease and to give Chau a proper burial. As time has gone on his family has been releasing diary entries about his time at the island and moments before he died. Everyone that knew him all said the same thing; he was a nice man with good intentions and just wanted to spread the word the word of God.
This article is so crazy to me because I had never heard of this island before and I didn't realize that there was an aggressive tribe living there. It is really sad to hear about John Chau's death and I wish the best for his family. I also hope that they can get ahold of his body and bring it back to America. One thing that I find fascinating the fact that he knew that traveling to the island was illegal but he did it anyway because he truly believed he could teach them about Christianity.
This reminds me a lot of how Europeans came over to America and brought disease with them. That's why the island is protected because they don't want anything like that to happen again, even on a smaller scale.
True, it is sad that this innocent man died. This should be a lesson to not intervene into clearly dangerous isolated tribes alone or even with people, just don't do it at all. It's dangerous to spread diseases to the tribes and get in contact with their aggressive customs that they don't know any better.
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