1d ago

US tourist arrested for landing on forbidden Indian tribal island

www.theguardian.com

Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, 24, set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel – part of India’s Andaman Islands – in an attempt to meet the Sentinelese people, who are believed to number only about 150.

“The American citizen was presented before the local court after his arrest and is now on a three-day remand for further interrogation,” the Andaman and Nicobar Islands police chief, HGS Dhaliwal, told AFP.

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1d ago

US tourist arrested for landing on forbidden Indian tribal island

www.theguardian.com /world/2025/apr/03/us-tourist-arrested-for-landing-on-forbidden-indian-tribal-island

57 comments

God, he even looks like a prick.

Everyday I cant help but just shake my head at my own countrymen. I hate it here.
Just nothing but selfish stupid people.

Sentinelese
Aren't those the people that are super aggressive and kill everyone from outside? Dude's lucky he only got arrested.
- They killed a missionary trying to proselytizes them
  
  Oh, well that's understandable.
  
  The world needs more Sentinelese.

It's always the idiots that try stunts like this, and no small amount of them come from the US.

Imagine having no knowledge of the outside world, then you stumble upon a ghost saying, “But first I wanna thank my sponsor; Raid: Shadow Legends!”

- A fun fact, the Indian govt won't prosecute the sentenelese people for dispatching their invaders
- He apparently wasn't planning on staying but still a moronic move.

The only two other possible endings to this were :
The locals kill him
The locals kill him, but also get some illness they have no immunity for, and they all die.

Alright, I'm going to say it out loud, despite the risk of this being counted as uncivil (via Rule 1) 🤞 🤞
These imbeciles don't need stern lectures, fines, or jail - they need livestreamed floggings to humiliate or even cripple them. Hundreds of millions should see, record, archive, and openly mock their distress publicly as a stark reminder of the stakes involved.
The Sentinelese are a genetic sub-group so isolated, and so unique that their loss would be incalculable. They're a living, breathing, irreplaceable time capsule of human culture and genetic information, and the thought that some thrill-seeking wanker could decimate them by passing the common cold to one of their members is beyond worrisome - it's enraging. As lucky as we were that the last worthless dick-beater - American Evangelical missionary, John Allen Chau - to make their way to the island was summarily killed, that luck may not hold out. We're talking about a group whose immunity is such a throwback that something like Chickenpox, Rubella, or Influenza could decimate the island's population. For next-nearest historical comparison, Smallpox, to which the inhabitants of North America had virtually no resistance due to longstanding geographic isolation from infection, is estimated to have killed 90% of the continent's population via European contact.
- I'm not on this guys side at all, but it's kinda a weird take to talk about the potential wipeout of an entire group of people as bad because they serve as an irreplaceable time capsule of information. I'm sure you care for other reasons too, but it just struck me as odd.
- Man, comments like yours are a shining example of people whose minds are too far gone because of these forums.
  It's like your existing in a fantasy-land where upvotes and hysteria are currency, and you're chasing after both.
  Reality and reason are not concepts you enjoy.
  
  What did they say that was so wrong?
- I don't disagree in the slightest — other than "decimate" ≠ "devastate" yet linguistic drift naturally followed the pseudo-Calliope Syndrome that normalized this fuckup, and here we are. 🤦🏼‍♂️
  Ah, the confidently illiterate leading morphology is not on my Boring Dystopia ™ bingo card, but maybe it's on yours?
  edit: Apologies for any hiccups in your comprehension. You can get better, though. Hint: that personal growth doesn't start in an echo chamber, so don't be a wart. Read more.
  
  Your neckbeard is showing.
  
  I don’t disagree in the slightest — other than “decimate” ≠ “devastate” yet linguistic drift naturally followed the pseudo-Calliope Syndrome that normalized this fuckup, and here we are. 🤦🏼‍♂️
  Ah, the confidently illiterate leading morphology is not on my Boring Dystopia ™ bingo card, but maybe it’s on yours?
  
  The Cambridge dictionary has this as it's only definition since it's other use is archaic.
  to kill a large number of something, or to reduce something severely
  Using the word to mean reducing by 1/10th started to fall out of use in the 1800s.

Americans continue to prove how abjectly stupid they are.
I really hope the rest of the world is genuinely done putting up with our horseshit.
- https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/german-tourist-arrested-chichen-itza-pyramid-spring-equinox/
  Stupidity is human, not just American.
  
  don't ever try to stop people from practicing out-group homogeniety (or in this case in-group homogeniety)
  
  I got to climb Chichen Itza when I was a kid, my parents took me before they closed it off in the 90's. It was a liability issue after someone fell.
  You have to admit that Americans are really showing their asses lately, though.
- Some Americans.
  Stupidity knows no boundaries.
  This guy is as dumb as they come
  
  Don't get me wrong here,friend, the following is not a bit meant to be related to be connected to the current state of the US,but: This special kind of "force your Christianity onto others" stupidity is very much a thing the US is world leader on.

As far as I'm concerned that's attempted murder on his part
- the whole island is 150 people. he could have earased them from existance
- 🤦

and recorded a video before returning to his boat
Did it for clout.
What a prick.
- i hope they destroy that video

Either he's never heard of John Chau or he's trying to become the next John Chau.
- A very well deserved Darwin award.

If true then good.

His YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Neo-Orientalist
Risks his life for 500 subs.
- You don't even need to look further than the guy's username to get the sense that he's an obnoxious little prick.
  
  wtf even is neo-orientalism
- I didn't think anyone would beat the YouTuber who crashed a plane into a forest and tried to claim it was an accident, but imagine your last words being "Please Like and Subscribe".

- Quoting a line from Firefly describing what happens when you get attacked by Reavers? That's a paddlin'.
  
  Just gotta go grab Jayne's Chain o' Command.
- This comment shouldn't have been censored.
  There's an overactive mod, or group of mods, that is quickly diminishing the integrity of this community.
  I've seen enough mod abuse in the past 20 minutes to make sure I don't take their decisions at face value.
- I know what you are getting at - but, have there really been accounts of cannibalism among the Sentinelese? I only know of their habits of killing strangers, often in mocking and ridiculing ways.
  Also - as an aside - beyond protecting dumbass tourists from themselves - it's also there to protect an island population like this from any new pathogens that may be spread inadvertently. So it's not just him being a dumbass concerning his own safety, he was also a dumbass where it concerns their safety, too.
  
  They prolly have better things to eat than longpig actually.
  
  have there really been accounts of cannibalism among the Sentinelese?
  How exactly are we to know?
  They do live like savages, though. Wouldn't be surprised if rape is just a normal and accepted part of their culture.
- The Sentinelese people are not known to practice cannibalism, or flaying.
  Your comment doesn’t make the American idiot look worse. It makes the Sentinelese sound awful.
  One previous idiot was killed by unknown means, likely an arrow or spear then this happened.
  The fishermen later saw the islanders dragging Chau's body and the next day they saw his body being buried on the shore
  
  I’m learning new stuff every day.
  I was wrong and I found out today that they don’t eat people, but they do kill people. Still though, best not to go to places like that.
  I apologize for being incredibly offensive, and won’t do any dirty deletes.
- But they might have caught some disease of him and died. We have to keep up food safety standards for these guys.

57 comments