24-years-old YouTuber Mykhailo Viktorovych has made headlines for trying to communicate with the most isolated tribe living on the North Sentinel Island, as he landed there after rowing a distance of 25 miles in a dinghy. The tribal population of the forbidden Indian island have a reputation for killing unwanted visitors, and this was Viktorovych’s third attempt at trying to get the islanders’ attention.
It should be noted here that the North Sentinel Island has remained off limits since 1996, and it is not legal to go within miles of it. As per anthropologists, there can be 50-100 people living there. Back in 2018, John Allen Chau visited the island, and he was killed. Talking about Mykhailo Viktorovych’s attempt to reach the island, Caroline Pearce, the director of the indigenous rights group Survival International, said, “It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic.”
Pearce added, “This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk. It’s very well known by now that uncontacted peoples have no immunity to common outside diseases like flu or measles, which could completely wipe them out.”
Mykhailo Viktorovych’s irresponsible act has gotten him arrested as police said that he had sailed to the Indian island on Saturday on an inflatable boat with a GPS and motor. Earlier this week also, he was taken into custody because of making an unauthorized landing on the island. Back in January and October also, Viktorovych tried to reach the North Sentinel Island, which means this was the third time he tried to do the same thing.
View this post on Instagram
From his room at the Andaman Sunset View hotel, cops have seized Viktorovych’s binoculars, his jacket, and a Go Pro. After arriving on the northeastern shore of the North Sentinel Island, he used his binoculars to scan the area, as per The Sun. He then blew a whistle for almost an hour in the hopes of getting the attention of the islanders. However, when no one responded, he did something bizarre as he stepped onto the island for a brief while and left a coconut and a can of coke as his offering to them.
He then collected some sand samples from the forbidden Indian island and recorded some footage on his Go Pro before he got back to his boat and left. When he returned to the mainland, fishermen alerted the cops and he was eventually arrested. He is now charged with the case of breach of protection of aboriginal tribes.
View this post on Instagram
This is, however not the first time that Mykhailo Viktorovych has done something reckless and dangerous like this as he also met with the Taliban as he visited Afghanistan last year, and his experiences there are documented on his YouTube channel through six videos titled Taliban-Controlled Afghanistan Through American Eyes.
As Viktorovych has now been arrested, it remains to be seen what kind of punishment he is given and if he again gets into such bizarre and dangerous attempts of doing forbidden things.
