【登载媒体】英国 卫报
【来源地址】http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/26/chinaearthquake.china
【译者】rodmace手工熬夜翻译……
【前序】文章非常长，大家细细品味一下英国主流媒体的一些转变
【译文】
在沉默中承受
他在别人眼里没什么特别。他，不是大奖赛的胜利者或者足球比赛的冠军；不是课堂上的调皮鬼，也不是学习尖子。对于12岁的年龄来讲，他显得有些瘦小，带着副眼镜，脸上挂着腼腆的微笑—他就是那种在集体照中被淹没在人群里，在操场上躲到角落去的那种男孩儿。
“他当初在不到8个月的时候就早产。他一直不是很强壮，因此我们一直在为他寻医问药。”他的母亲对我说。：“我们在他身上有着太多的希望与寄托：他就是我们精神力量的源泉。我们也并没有期待他成为一个“伟人”，但是我们希望他能好好的。而现在，我们希望政府能给我们满意的解释和公正。”
她在她的儿子被位于四川绵竹的阜新2小倒塌的废墟冲垮的2周之内都没有说过话。她的儿子是4700名在5月12日中国西南发生的地震而死于非命的孩子中的一员。3个月过去了，政府大考阔斧地开始重建这个曾经7万人遇难的省份。临时房屋和基本安置正在以惊人的速度进行。成年人已经回到工作中，而孩子们也回到了课堂。在奥运会的开幕式上，一位9岁的幸存者，和篮球明星姚明一起引导中国国旗进入会场。而他，在地震中挽救了他的同学的生命。
然而，在这种集体迅速恢复的表象下，却是更为不愉快的故事。当局正在全力以赴地帮助数以百万计的幸存者。但是，他们也正在竭尽全力的让那些在地震中因校舍倒塌失去孩子的家庭沉默下来。
没有人跟这些父母们讲话。连那些在北京就西藏和宗教自由问题示威的外国人也不例外。么有任何非政府组织在四川，因为他们痛苦的知道帮助四川灾民则意味着他们其他的工作必须停滞。数得上来的几个人权活动家曾经试图帮助过，但最后的结果就是把这些父母送进了拘留所。而在另一方面，这些父母们却开始为自己讲话，尽管他们在过去的8周经历过各种骚扰和威胁。他们在抗议的时候被拽走，在去往北京抗议的路上被阻止，并且被警告不要和外国记者交谈。
“现在他们甚至不允许我们聚在一起。”一个男人对我说。他同意接受我们的电话采访，尽管他担心电话可能遭到**。“官员们告诉我们要有耐心。他们跟我们说我们需要来支持奥运会，而且奥运一过，他们就会把问题解决。但是我们已经等了太长的时间了……我猜他们希望时间足够长的话我们就会忘记。”
当我当初来到阜新的时候，我在四川报道地震的余震有两个多星期，而那所是我发现的第6所被毁掉的学校。
根据政府的估算，在灾难中有7000多教室倒塌。在都江堰，孩子在尸体袋中排放在大街上；在北川，地上铺上了厚厚的一层瘦弱的尸体，痛苦的淹没在尘埃中。空气因死亡而凝聚。一个10多岁的少年形容他困在废墟中触摸到他同学冰凉的皮肤，这时候，他知道，她已经死去了。
另外一个小男孩儿上前问有没有人知道他最好的朋友的下落。你去过的所有地方都有那些瘦小的尸体以及喷涌的痛苦与愤怒—那些愤怒最终被那些无缘无故的死亡所放大。
在那些类似北川的地方，地震的巨大力量在其途径之地毁灭了一切。住宅、商店、办公室被甩到马路上，或者直接就成为一片废墟。学校被毁，因为所有的地方都一样。而在另外一些地方，比如都江堰，学校倒塌了，而周围其他的建筑却几乎好发无伤。阜新就是其中之一，而挺立的周边建筑和校舍的废墟相比尤其令那些父母愤慨。而这些父母大多数是农民，或者小业主，他们都很穷困，大多数也未收教育，而他们也从未挑战过当局。
痛苦战胜了恐惧。这些父母不仅仅愿意空开与当地官员对峙，他们绝望得想要如此。每天，他们都在事发地聚集，在灵堂里点燃蜡烛来祭奠他们的孩子，并等待当局出面道歉。那些没人认领的书包成堆地湮没在尘埃中，书本、铅笔透过厚厚的尘埃投射出一丝血红。
卫报的摄影记者和我在当地教育局长在父母们多次要求下终于同意出面调解之后及时赶到。他说这个事情还在调查之中，并且补充道；“我也很难过，但这是一个自然灾害。”他提醒他们全市一共有11所学校倒塌。在我们达到之前，来自受难家庭的痛苦恶化成为了愤怒，这种愤怒很难被忽视，因为父母们对着那位一直很冷静的教育局长声嘶力竭的喊道：“为什么你们这么黑心？”“为什么我们的孩子死了？”父亲们则砍下残存的水泥板来展示那些可以抹成灰的水泥还有那些变形的难以分辨的细细的铁丝。他们相信劣质的原材料害死了他们127死去的孩子，以及分布在全省在其他地方更多的学生。
在全国范围，成百上千的中国人也得出了同样的结论。公众的愤怒正在升级。国立媒体提出了令人难堪的问题，而专家们则站出来谴责劣质的设计以及建筑。一份调查性的杂志，财经，检查了5所学校并指出没有任何一个学校是被验收过的。政府在网上收集处理民情并且承诺进行有可能与腐败相关的建筑质量调查。
当阜新的父母们在前往更高层的政府机构准备示威的时候，绵竹市党委书记双膝跪地恳求他们停下来。他们没有理睬他。在整个地震灾区，当地政府曾展示不仅仅是人性化而是前所未有的开放。他们欢迎来自全国的志愿者，邀请外国救援队伍，并且允许记者全程报道灾情。
在我们最初那次采访过程中那几天中，看起来那些父母的问题会得到回答。昙花一现。几周之内，监控部门开始要求媒体避免谈到类似问题。几个月之后，警察开始把抗议的父母拽离。而这些家庭开始反击。他们威胁要为他们死去的孩子注册新的学年。他们准备起诉。他们在政府办公楼外示威。他们对那些有希望帮助他们的活动家开口说话。
但，当我回到阜新的时候，我已经看不到任何愤怒示威的痕迹了。毁坏的校舍全天候有人把守。便衣警察监视着事发地和那些父母的家。那些曾经绝望地要向人讲述他们孩子故事的亲属们现在已经不敢出来讲话。“他们看不到为什么要跟国外媒体讲，他们并不认为这有什么帮助。”其中一个母亲说。她同意在附近的一个市场里面见我，然后我们在背街的小巷里面穿梭，穿过了绿油油的大米地，以避免在谈话过程中引起公安的注意。尽管是一位忠诚的共产党员，她还是害怕如果被抓会导致报复。同我这次采访的很多人一样，她要求匿名。
在前一天，那些父母中的5位计划坐火车到北京去请愿。这是在他们认为当地政府正在无视他们的请求后，他们新的抗议途径中的一个。而来自高层的政府批文要求在北京奥运期间要“零抗议，零请愿”。
“公安局在我们的代表买票的地方等着他们。我想他们一定有一份我们的名单，因为他们知道我们的代表住在哪里并告诉他们不要去。他们告诉我们不要制造麻烦。”她说。“我们不想要补偿，我们就想要什么人来承担责任。我们不希望这种事情重演。”她补充道。在她讲话的时候，她抽出一张她女儿的照片。她认为她已经是年纪太大不能再要孩子了。她听上去也没有勇气再去尝试了。
阜新的父母们要求彻查。而他们只得到了钱：6万元，对于中国的标准来讲是笔大数目，但是这是有代价的。据报道，那些父母在申请赔偿款的过程中，受到各种压力要求他们签署一份承诺遵守法律保证社会秩序的承诺书，换句话说，就是停止抗议的承诺书。
“我们并不追求钱财。我们就想要正义，我们希望那些应该受罚的人得到应有的制裁。”一位愤怒的父亲说。“但是他们非常希望我们签字。我们诱骗并且强行让我们签字。那些官员在我的家里带到了晚上11点或者12点，他们说只有我这一家没有签字，如果我不签字，那么我就是唯一一个什么都得不到的。”
“因此，我们就签字了，而第二天我们发现他们跟所有人说的都一样。我们发现我们被欺骗了。他们已经销毁了证据，学校的废墟。他们说他们必须这样以防止传染病。但是那仅仅因为那些建筑是危险的。我的孩子不应该死。”他补充说，没有任何政府当初承诺的调查的迹象。
我以为政府会给我们以正义，但是现在，这已经不可能了。“另一个女士边说边抹着眼泪。”一些人还是跟我们说政府会解决这个事情，但是我们中的大多数认为那些人已经被政府收买了。在前三个月我都没有哭过，但是现在我哭了。在之前，我认为我们有了问题，政府会帮助我们。但是当我们真的去找他们的时候，那里一个人也没有。“
那些父母也不能去寻求外界的帮助。上个月，人权组织报告指出一位来自四川的教师因传播谣言和破坏社会秩序被判一年劳教，而这其实是因为拍摄学校废墟以及在网络上传播这些照片并附带了对于建筑质量的批评。
刘绍坤（音）据信是因此类材料入狱的第三人。黄琦（音），一位来自长期以来的人权活动家。他的家人说，他在帮助那些父母并在其网站发出一些关于学校建筑架构问题的文章后因“非法持有国家机密“而被正式逮捕。他的一篇文章是关于曾红岭（音），曾置身学术界，也是第一位被关押的活动家。根据总部设在香港的人权组织提供的信息，她在网上发表攻击学校破烂建筑之后，因颠覆的罪名被抓。
这些镇压更为值得注意，因为那些父母并没有要挑战北京政权的本意。这也无关诸如西藏问题的国家主权问题；也与另外一个种权利架构，比如宗教，没有任何关系。他们也没有质问政府的合法性。他们仅仅是在国际注意力集中在中国的时候让这个国家显得有些尴尬，而这让那些官员们相当敏感。这个国家正在扩充的给予异见人士的空间，都在奥运期间需展示一个完美形象的压力下被挤压。那些家庭的声音是此起彼伏，声势浩大的，而这个问题由于其自身的复杂性也非一个人或者一个部门所能处理的。
那些收了昧心钱的腐败官员也许在其中有着一定作用。但是，也可以看出，能力有限的设计师，未经训练的工人，以及在其抽成的承包商，还有那些生产劣质材料的工厂，以及没有发现质量问题的监工也一样导致了问题的发生。“这没有一个特定的人应该为此负责。你需要的是对整个系统进行大修。“人权观察的中国问题专家，NicholasBequlin说。
当地政府对于此类复杂问题的回应可以从以前类似的丑闻中看出一二。他补充道：给予补偿的压力的真实目的就是掩盖。“政府发出了一些信号表明它会认真对待这个问题并会在透明负责任地处理此事，然而，这些努力最后都逐渐消失了。“
“第一个问题，“他说，”那就是缺乏自由的媒体来强调这个问题。如果发现事情的真相是会让你尴尬，那么显然你会失去动力。其次，就是当地的自主性。一旦『中央政府』了的官员一离开，那些问题他们就不放在心上了。省一级的官僚主义还在顽强的沿着自己的老路继续。这是在政府不断迈出正面的步伐时面对的一个问题。“
在这个月早期，中国政府宣布对地震再去施行一个760亿英镑的恢复计划，计划强调了对于学校和医院修建的重要性，并要求他们“必须是非常安全和坚固，并足以让民众安心的“。这不是中国政府第一次把学校安全提到议事日程上来。根据财经报道，去年，四川花费5千5百万英镑来加固危房。当时遵循的是一个危房名单，而阜新并未列在单上。
【原文】
Suffer in silence
Bereavedparents with their daughter’s photograph at a vigil at the Fuxinelementary school in Mianzhu county. Photograph: Dan Chung
Hewas nothing special, except to his parents. Not a trophy winner orfootball champion; not the class joker or swot. He was small for a12-year-old, with glasses and a tentative smile - the sort of boy whoblurs into the crowd in school photos, who stands aside in the cornerof a playground.
"He was born prematurely, at less than eightmonths. He wasn't very strong, so we spent all our money seekingtreatment for him," his mother told me. "We had so many hopes andexpectations for him: he was the source of all our mental strength. Wedidn't expect him to be a 'great man' - but we hoped he would be a goodone. Now we hope the government can give us a satisfactory explanationand justice."
She was speaking less than a fortnight after herson had been crushed in the total collapse of Fuxin No 2 Elementary inMianzhu, Sichuan. He was one of 4,700 children who died when theirschools crumbled around them in the earthquake that ripped throughsouth-west China on May 12. Three months on, the government has madeextraordinary strides in rebuilding a province where at least 70,000died. Temporary homes and basic amenities have appeared with startlingspeed. Adults are back at business; children have returned to study. Atthe Olympic opening ceremony, a nine-year-old survivor, who savedseveral classmates, bore the Chinese flag alongside basketball playerYao Ming.
Yet behind the image of communal resilience lies anuglier story. The authorities are striving to aid millions ofsurvivors. But they are also doing their best to silence angry familieswho want to know why so many schools collapsed when the buildingsaround them endured.
No one is speaking for these parents. Notthe foreign protesters who have flagged up issues such as Tibet andreligious freedom through demonstrations in Beijing. Notnon-governmental organisations in Sichuan, which are painfully awarethat supporting them would spell the end to their other work there. Andnot the handful of activists who tried, but earned themselvesdetention. Instead, parents are speaking for themselves, despite theharassment and threats that have dogged them over the past eight weeks.They have been dragged away from protests, prevented from travelling toBeijing to air their complaints, and warned against talking to foreignreporters.
"Now they do not even allow us to gather together,"one man told me. He had agreed to speak by telephone, despite hisconcern that the call might be monitored. "The officials asked us to bepatient. They told us we need to support the Olympics, and after theOlympics they will sort this out. But we have been waiting for such along time ... I guess they hope that if the time is long enough we willjust forget this."
When I came across Fuxin, I had been inSichuan, covering the earthquake's aftermath, for almost two weeks; itwas the sixth ruined school I had found.
By the government'sestimates, 7,000 classrooms collapsed in the tremor. In Dujiangyan,children lay on the street in body bags; in Hanwang, they were storedon concrete ping-pong tables in the schoolyard; in Beichuan, the groundwas thick with small corpses, ghostly with dust. The air stank ofdeath. A teenager described lying trapped under rubble, touching thecooling skin of a classmate and knowing that she was dead. Anotheryoung boy came up to ask if anyone knew the fate of his best friend.Everywhere you went there were small bodies and welling pain and anger- magnified by the needlessness of their deaths.
In areas such asBeichuan, the force of the quake destroyed almost everything in itspath. Homes and shops and offices were thrown sideways or simplycrashed to the ground. Schools suffered because everything did. But inother areas, such as Dujiangyan, schools crumbled while the buildingsaround them stood almost unscathed. Fuxin was another of those, and thecontrast between the surrounding structures and the rubble of theclassrooms had roused parents' fury. Most were farmers or smalltraders; they were poor, largely uneducated people, who had neverchallenged authority.
Pain overwhelmed their fear. The parentswere not just willing to confront officials; they were desperate to doso. Each day, they gathered at the site, lit candles at a makeshiftshrine to their children and waited for the authorities to come andapologise. Unclaimed schoolbags lay in a grimy pile; books, pencils anda scatter of fuchsia sequins poked through the dust.
TheGuardian's photographer and I arrived shortly after the town'seducation chief finally came to pay his respects, following repeatedrequests from the parents. He said the matter was under investigation,then added: "I feel sad too, but it's a natural disaster." He remindedthem that 11 schools had collapsed across the city. Before us, thefamilies' grief was metastasising into anger - a rage impossible toignore as the parents screamed into his imperturbable face: "Why areyour hearts so black?" "Why did our children die?" Fathers hacked atthe remains to demonstrate concrete you could brush away like powderand thin steel frames that had buckled beyond recognition. Theybelieved that substandard construction had claimed the lives of the 127students who died here; and those of many more students in otherschools across the province.
Across the country, millions ofChinese citizens were drawing the same conclusion. Public outrage wasswelling. The state media asked awkward questions and experts cameforward to condemn poor design and construction. The investigativemagazine Caijing examined five schools and claimed that none of thesites had been surveyed. The government fielded questions online andpromised an inquiry into whether poor building work, linked tocorruption, was to blame.
When the Fuxin parents marched tohigher authorities, the Communist party secretary for Mianzhu city goton his knees to beg them to stop. They ignored him. Throughout thequake zone, the authorities were showing not just humility but unusualopenness. They welcomed volunteers from across the country, invitedoverseas relief teams and allowed reporters to cover the disasterunhindered.
For a few days in the wake of our visit it seemedas if the parents' questions might be answered. The thaw did not lastlong. Within weeks, the censors had ordered the media to drop thesubject. Within the month, police were dragging parents away fromprotests. The families fought back, at first. They threatened toregister their dead children for the new school year. They pledged tosue. They protested outside government offices. They spoke to activistswhom they hoped might help them.
But by the time I returned toFuxin, there was no sign of the angry demonstrations I had witnessed.The ruins of the school were guarded through the day. Plain-clothespolice were watching the site, and the homes of the most vocal parents.Many of the relatives, once desperate to tell their children's stories,were now too frightened to talk. "They don't see the point of speakingto the foreign media; they don't think it's helped," one mother said.She had agreed to meet me at a nearby market and we drove around theback roads of the area, past lush, green rice fields, to avoid theattention of public security officials while we talked. Though a loyalparty member, she feared retaliation if she was caught; like all thoseI spoke to this time, she asked not to be named.
The previousday, five of the parents had planned to catch a train to Beijing, topetition the central authorities. It is one of the few routes left tothose who believe local officials are ignoring them. But an edict fromon high had warned provincial governments to ensure "zero protests,zero petitioners to Beijing" in the run-up to the Olympics.
"ThePublic Security Bureau were waiting for our representatives when theywent to buy tickets at the station. I think they must have a list of usall because they knew who they were, and told them not to go. They havetold us not to make trouble," she said. "We don't want compensation; wejust want someone held accountable. We don't want this to happenagain," she added. As she spoke, she stroked a tiny photograph of herdaughter. She was, she thought, too old to have another child; she didnot sound as if she had the heart to try.
The Fuxin parentssought a full investigation. Instead, they were offered money: 60,000yuan (£4,500), a huge sum by Chinese standards, but one that came at acost. Parents reported coming under intense pressure to apply for thecash by signing a document that included a promise to abide by the lawand maintain social order - in other words, stop protesting.
"Weare not pursuing wealth; we just need justice - we want the people whodeserve it to be punished," an angry father told us. "But they wereextremely eager that we would sign. They forced and deceived us. Theofficials stayed in our rooms until 11pm or 12pm, and they told us thatothers all signed this and if you did not sign you would be the onlyperson who got nothing.
"So we signed, and the next day we foundthat they told everybody this. We found out that we had been cheated.They got rid of the evidence, the wreckage of the school [which theylevelled]. They said they had to do it to prevent infectious diseases,but it was just because it showed that the building was dangerous. Mychild should not have died." There was, he added, little sign of theinvestigation that the authorities had promised.
"I thought thegovernment would give us justice, but it now seems that is impossible,"wept another woman. "Some people still tell us that the government willsolve this, but most of us think that they've been bought by officials.I haven't cried in the last three months, but I do now. Before, Ithought the government would help us and if we had any trouble we couldgo to them. But when we went to them there was no one there."
Norcan the parents turn to outside assistance. Last month, a human rightsgroup reported that a teacher from Sichuan had been sentenced to ayear's re-education in a labour camp for "disseminating rumours anddestroying social order" - that is, photographing the ruins of theschools and circulating the pictures on the internet, along withcriticism of the construction standards.
Liu Shaokun is thoughtto be the third person held for posting such material. The family ofHuang Qi, a long-standing human rights activist from Sichuan, says hewas formally arrested for "illegal possession of state secrets" afterhelping bereaved parents and posting articles about structural failingsof schools on his website. One of his articles was about Zeng Hongling,a former academic, who may have been first to be detained. According toa Hong Kong-based rights group she has been held on subversion chargesafter posting online essays attacking shoddy construction.
Thecrackdown is all the more striking because the parents have neversought to challenge Beijing's authority. It is not an issue of nationalsovereignty, such as Tibet; or about restraints on alternative powerstructures, such as religion. They were not questioning the legitimacyof the government. They were simply embarrassing it at a moment wheninternational attention to China made officials particularly sensitive.The country's increasing space for dissent, carved out over recentyears, has been squeezed by the pressure to perfect its image ahead ofthe Olympics. The families' voices were potent and numerous; and theproblem was too complex for a single person or department to take therap.
Corrupt officials siphoning off cash may have played apart in places. But so too, it seems, did inept designers, untrainedlabourers, contractors who themselves took an illicit cut of thebudget, the factories who churned out poor-quality materials and thesupervisors who failed to spot problems. "There was no one personclearly responsible for the incident; you would need to overhaul thewhole system," says Nicholas Bequelin, a China specialist at HumanRights Watch.
The authorities' response to such complex issueswas recognisable from previous scandals, he adds: pressure to takecompensation in place of real redress. "The government gives signs thatit's serious and transparent and more accountable - but then theseefforts fade away."
"One problem," he says, "is the absence of afree press to keep the issue in the headlines. The incentive forfinding out things that are going to embarrass you is just not there. Asecond is local inertia. Once [central government] officials have left,and the issue is not in their minds, the provincial bureaucracyreasserts itself in the old ways. It's a problem we have with a lot ofpositive steps the government takes."
Earlier this month, theauthorities announced a £76bn recovery plan for the quake zone,promising to prioritise the reconstruction of schools and hospitals -and vowing to make them "extremely safe and solid structures the publiccan feel reassured about". It is not the first time school safety hasbeen on the government's agenda. According to Caijing, last yearSichuan put aside £55m to improve dangerous buildings. An at-riskregister was compiled. Fuxin was not on it.
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本帖最后由 rodmace 于 2008-8-27 08:55 编辑 ]
