Seized GoPro reveals more details on American's illegal visit to world's most remote tribe
More details have emerged on the 24-year-old man who made an illegal visit to one of the world's most remote tribes after his GoPro was seized by police.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov risked not only his own life but the lives of everyone living on North Sentinel Island when he allegedly travelled there earlier this week, leaving a diet coke and a coconut as a peace offering to the Sentinelese people.
Being within 5km of the tribe is illegal and for good reason, as 27-year-old Christian missionary John Allen Chau found out back in 2018 when he died on a visit to the small island in India.
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Polyakov meticulously planned out his visit to the island and had allegedly even survived two previous visits.
It's clear that the 'American idiot' has a taste for visiting dangerous locations as on his YouTube channel, he has also documented a video of him in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The director of indigenous rights group Survival International, Caroline Pearce, said the American's attempt to make contact with the tribe was 'deeply disturbing', due to the fact that the people living there have no immunity to common diseases in the outside world.
She said: "It beggars belief that someone could be that reckless and idiotic.
"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 un-contacted peoples have no immunity to common outside diseases like flu or measles, which could completely wipe them out.”
After local fisherman alerted cops to Polyakov's illegal visit, he was arrested and they seized binoculars, a Go Pro, and life jacket, among other items in his room at The Andaman Sunset View hotel.
It is alleged that this was his third visit to the island, and he was even held by police last week, but that seemingly didn't stop him from visiting again last Saturday.
It is reported by The Daily Mail that the seized GoPro footage depicts him 'claiming unofficial representation of the US'.
He can also be seen scanning the island from his boat, having arrived at the northeastern shore, before inexplicably blowing a whistle, which he is extremely fortunate didn't attract the attention of the local tribe, or he could have easily landed a far worse fate than arrest.
Finally, he makes the bizarre peace offering before filming a video, presumably for his YouTube channel and leaving on his boat.
James Moorhouse