Cannibals beseige ship

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 17

Cannibals beseige ship

NZPA-Reuter Hong Kong Fifty “wild natives’’ who besieged a stranded Panamanian vessel, the Primrose, in the Bay of Bengal, are cannibals, according to the

“Oriental Daily Newsk” The 16,000-ton Pana-manian-registered Primrose ran aground on August 2 off North Sentinel Island while on its way from Bangladesh to Australia. The “natives” who surrounded the Primrose in

their own boats, brandishing spears and arrows, came from Sentinel Island, where about 250 of the cannibal tribesmen live in isolation from civilisation, the report said.

The tips of their spears and arrows had been dipped in poison. On Sentinel Island, where the natives walk mostly naked with a few exceptions of loin-cloths, two of eight Western anthropologists died instantly on landing in the

early 1970 s when the tribes- ! men shot them with poisoned ' arrows, the report said. ; The surviving six ran for j their lives, leaving behind \ the two bodies, which were i cooked and eaten. !

The 31 seamen, Hong Kong i Chinese and Taiwanese, were ■ airlifted from the Primrose i to Port Blair, capital of the - Andaman and Nicobar island ’ group, on August 13 by a ; helicopter of the Indian Gov- ' ernment-owned Oil and ; Natural Gas Commission. i