The death of John Allen Chau the 26-year-old missionary from Washington state — who broke a raft of laws and put the health of the indigenous people at risk — has sparked international outrage, a heated debate about the protection of tribal communities and at least two investigations by authorities in India. It also has prompted soul-searching in the U.S. evangelical community, which has been debating whether Chau was a martyr, a fool or was afflicted by a messiah complex.
“God, I don’t want to die,” Chau scrawled in his journal while sitting in a fishing boat off the coast of the island where the North Sentinelese people live, shortly before he was killed. “WHO WILL TAKE MY PLACE IF I DO?”
Chau had a “very meticulous plan to camouflage his expedition as fishing activity,” said Dependra Pathak, the director general of police for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Brahma Chellaney, a professor at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, says Chau violated the country’s aboriginal and forest protection laws as well as cultural norms.
“He repeatedly trespassed on this island, and they lost their patience with him,” Chellaney said. “There is faith, and there is mental illness. . . . He didn’t understand the line between faith and doing something that’s absolutely nutty.”
Chau’s diary, which his family provided to The Washington Post, unfolds like the adventure novels he once read. He arrived in the Andamans on Oct. 16 and paid fishermen to take him by boat at night to the island on Nov. 14, evading the lights of patrols on the way. When the sun broke, Chau drew near the tribe. The women began “looing and chattering,” he wrote, and he was faced by men armed with bows and arrows. “My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you,” he shouted before retreating.
The second day, he kayaked to the island and tried to offer the tribe small gifts — fish, scissors, cord and safety pins. A man in white with a crown, possibly made of flowers, shouted at him. He responded by singing “worship songs and hymns” and the tribe fell silent. A juvenile fired an arrow at him, piercing his waterproof Bible. Chau fled on foot through the mangroves.
“Lord, is this island Satan’s last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?” he wrote.
By the third day, he became convinced he was going to die.
“Watching the sunset and it’s beautiful — crying a bit . . . wondering if it will be the last sunset I see,” he wrote. He asked the fishermen to drop him on the beach. They returned the next day and saw the tribesmen dragging Chau’s body.
The fishermen have been arrested, as has a friend of Chau’s who helped organize the boat trip. Police have no strategy to retrieve his body and don’t plan to confront the islanders, Pathak said.
Chau’s friends from the islands are still grieving and mystified by the whole episode.
“He lost his mind, definitely,” Snoeij said. “But ask any adventurer. You have to lose your mind a little bit, otherwise you don’t do it.”