screengrab: Survival International
DCL
Fish and marine animals aren't the only victims of illegal fishing and poaching, as indigenous rights group Survival International is highlighting. In fact remote tribal groups on Indian Ocean islands are coming under threat from Burmese poachers, more than one hundred of whom have been arrested in recent weeks off North Sentinel Island, in the Bay of Bengal.
The Sentinelese Islanders who live there number between 50 and 400 people attack anyone who approaches their island, including people in helicopters checking to see how many people survived the 2004 tsunami which ripped through the region.
Though under Indian protection and part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, no treaty actually exists between the Indian government and the inhabitants.
Furthermore, the Jarawa tribe, which has only had contact with the outside world since 1998, also is having problems with poachers. In 2008 both an Indian poacher and a Jarawa man died in a conflict on Jarawa land.
In both cases, poachers go after turtles and sea cucumber for sale in the Chinese market, as well as hunt in the Jarawa's forests.
As to the threat to the islanders, who have lived on these islands for an estimated 55,000 years with virtually no contact with outside humans, Survival International says,
Both the Jarawa and the Sentinelese are hunter-gatherers, and theft of the fish and animals in their territory endangers their food supply. Poachers also risk introducing common diseases to the tribes. The Sentinelese are especially at risk: their complete isolation means they are likely to have no immunity to diseases such as flu and measles.
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