Blogger of Ukrainian origin arrested in India: what is known
4 April 18:52
A 24-year-old American blogger of Ukrainian descent, Mikhail Polyakov, was arrested in India while trying to meet with the isolated Sentinelese tribe. To do this, he illegally sailed to their island, violating the ban on visiting it.
This was reported by CNN, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
According to the Indian police, Polyakov arrived in the Indian city of Port Blair on March 26. And at one in the morning on March 29, he went to North Sentinel Island, where the tribe lives. He took a coconut and a can of cola with him as “offerings for the Sentinelese.”
He approached the island at about 10:00 and tried to attract attention with a whistle for about an hour. He then landed on the shore for five minutes, where he left his “gifts,” collected sand samples, and recorded a video. When he was returning, local fishermen spotted him and alerted the police.
Poliakov’s father is of Ukrainian descent, and he runs a YouTube channel called Neo-Orientalist, where he has already published a series of videos from Afghanistan, the Daily Mail reports. Last October, he tried to visit North Sentinel in an inflatable kayak, but was stopped by hotel staff.
This time, he prepared more carefully for his trip, researching sea conditions, tides and accessibility of the Kurma Dera beach, from which he set off for North Sentinel. In addition, he was able to video members of the Jarawa tribe, another indigenous group. This, as well as his video from the Sentinel Island, was discovered on his GoPro camera.
Visiting the North Sentinel Island is prohibited by Indian law in order not to destroy the way of life of the Sentinelese, one of the last isolated tribes in the world, and to protect them from the diseases of the modern world to which they are not immune.
The tribesmen themselves do not want to communicate with the outside world, meeting strangers with weapons. In 2018, they killed missionary John Allen Chow, who arrived on the island hoping to convert the Sentinelese to Christianity.
