Recently, an American missionary was found dead on the North Sentinel Island of the Andaman group of islands. According to the local eyewitnesses, he had attempted to infiltrate the island in order to convert the local tribes, currently marked as endangered by the Indian government and was subsequently killed by the tribe.
The incident has been covered by the entire world in a rather mixed way. Despite his allegiance and affiliations, the world media surprisingly minced no words in covering his death, even if grudgingly. Following are some of the examples:-
Some of them thoroughly exposed his real intentions, while some like propaganda website Persecution.org tried to whitewash his image, attempting to justify his actions. However, they were unanimous on one point: The missionary, John Allen Chau, was an American missionary, who used illegal means to illegally convert innocuous tribals into Christianity.
However, a curious deviation came from our own Indian media. Not only did they try to justify his actions, they also painted him as an innocent tourist, who happened to be on that island as an innocent traveler. The media further went on to say that he was killed by murderous tribals for merely propagating a peaceful religion. Following are the specimens of their enlightened, path breaking coverage of the same:-
This is not something new or shocking as our Indian media is well notorious on this parameter. They’re as enthusiastic in glorifying dreaded terrorists like Burhan Wani and Hafeez Saeed as they would invest their time in giving winds to the hoax of Hindu terrorism. So such biased coverage is almost daily bread and butter for them. Barring the exception of right wing portals, such as Swarajya Magazine or OpIndia, none actually bothered to show John Chau as the deceiving missionary that he was.
However, what makes this atrocious and intolerable is the way that the left liberal media has breached all limits of decency on this issue. John Chau was no innocent soul, but a wicked missionary. He had evaded every legal recourse in order to carry out his so called evangelical mission. Much as we don’t support violence, the tribals were only protecting themselves from an invader, who attempted to destroy the tranquility of their island.
To quote Deependra Pathak, DGP of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, “We refuse to call him a tourist. Yes, he came on a tourist visa, but he came with a specific purpose to preach on a prohibited island.” However, our Indian media cared two hoots about this statement, in their pursuit to justify the vicious evangelism.
Also, in terms of covering the deceased missionary, the media used those techniques that would even put previous examples of covering Taimur Ali Khan and Sridevi’s death to shame. From depicting his final words, to describing the contents that he was taking out for the tribals, the media wants to declare the innocence of a man who isn’t.
Interestingly, the local reports about John Chau, as confirmed from the regional media, have revealed that the missionary not only evaded the Indian coast guard, but also paid the local fishermen Rs. 25000 to get him to the North Sentinel Island. Isn’t this a criminal action? By portraying him as an innocent tourist, isn’t our media glorifying him and whitewashing his sins? The question here though is: FOR HOW LONG?