Cyclone in Myanmar
缅甸风暴
Myanmar’s misery
缅甸的苦难
May 8th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Despite their appalling government, the Burmese people deserve all the help they can get
缅甸人民不应因其残暴政府而失去他们应得的援助
THE decision by Myanmar’s ruling generals to move their capital in 2005 from Yangon, the country’s biggest city, to the remote mountain fastness of Naypyidaw was as baffling as many of their other policies. Local rumour ascribed it to the advice of fortune-tellers, who foretold revolt and disaster in Yangon.
2005年，缅甸军政府将其首都从其最大城市仰光迁至遥远的山区堡垒内比都。这一决策与他的很多政策一样，令人困惑不已。当地谣传，此举源于算命先生的占卜，他们预言仰光会有叛乱和灾难发生。
Revolt came last September. It was suppressed easily enough, by an army willing to shoot unarmed protesters. Now natural disaster has come, and on an unimaginable scale: a cyclone that has killed tens of thousands, left hundreds of thousands without shelter and placed millions at risk of disease and hunger (see article). In recent years only the Asian tsunami of December 2004 and the Kashmir earthquake of October 2005 have wreaked devastation as great.
仰光去年九月爆发叛乱，但被军队轻易镇压，因为他们不惮于射杀手无寸铁的抗议者。如今自然灾难也发生了，其强度令人难以想象：强热带风暴造成上万人死亡，无数人流离失所、无家可归，几百万人遭受疾病和饥饿的威胁。近年来，只有2004年12月的亚洲海啸和2005年10月的克什米尔地震带来了如此强度的破坏。
You do not have to believe in astrology to see the essential truth behind the fortune-teller rumour, for this is a regime more interested in looking after itself than its people. It failed to prepare them for the approaching danger, despite having been forewarned. Its soldiers, quick enough to respond to monk-led protests last September, were invisible for days as citizens struggled to cope with devastation, death and injury. And, as a horrified world offered help, the generals were obstructive. Aid workers waited for visas and the junta haggled about import duties on emergency supplies. This is criminal. The first few days after a disaster are, in terms of the lives eventually lost, by far the most important.
你不必去相信占星学以找出上述算命先生传言背后的真理成分，因为这是一个关注自身利益更甚于关注其民众安危的政权。尽管缅甸军政府获悉了灾害预警，但它却 未能帮助民众做好抵御灾难的准备。它的军队在去年九月应对由僧人领导的抗议中反映神速，可当民众在灾难、死亡和伤病中挣扎的数日里，却消弭于无形。而且， 当被巨大灾难所震惊的世界向缅甸提供援助时，军政府却从中阻挠。救援人员在等待准入签证，而军政府却在为紧急援助物资的进口税率而锱铢必较。这完全是犯罪 行径。就最终罹难的生命而言，灾难发生的最初几天是最为重要的时期。
The politics of saving lives
挽救生命的政治
For foreign donors, Myanmar raises a dilemma seen also in North Korea, which may be on the verge of another famine (see article): how to rescue desperate people whose own government spurns outside assistance, and how to do so without providing a lifeline to an illegitimate and unpopular regime. In the aftermath of a disaster, only the first of these questions matters: when so many are in such need, the humanitarian imperative overrides qualms about giving handouts to a repugnant regime. Nor, on the whole, is there any way of sidestepping the junta (or the North Korean regime) in the distribution of aid. Some foreign aid agencies have existing networks in the country. But none has a nationwide reach.
缅甸的灾难向外国捐助者提出一个也可在朝鲜（可 能处在另一次饥荒的边缘）遇到的困境：如何救助那些政府拒绝外界援助的国家的绝望人民，如何救助灾民而又避免让其非法的、失去民心的政府从中得益？灾难发 生后，只有第一个问题事关重大：当如此多的灾民需要救助时，人道主义援助比忧虑帮助了令人反感的政府更为重要。而且在分发救援物品时，根本无法绕过缅甸军 政府（或朝鲜政权）。一些外国救援机构在缅甸有自己的网络，但是都没有覆盖所有地区。
In theory it may be possible, as France’s foreign minister has argued, to obtain a United Nations’ resolution obliging the junta to accept aid. In practice, Myanmar’s friends on the Security Council would probably block such a move and it will remain a question of coaxing the generals into accepting help. That means avoiding the risk of feeding the junta’s paranoia. It sees the offer of help as the thin end of a wedge of political interference aimed at prising it from power. In this sense it was unfortunate that George Bush’s magnanimous offer this week (“Let the United States come and help you!”) was made as he signed legislation awarding a congressional honour to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s detained opposition leader.
理论上讲，正如法国外长的提议，可以通过一份联合国决议，强迫缅甸军政府接受援助。然而，缅甸在联合国安理会的朋友很可能会行使否决权，而且如何说服军政府接受援助依然是个难题。这意味着要尽力避免刺激偏执的缅甸政府。他们认为救援是旨在推翻其政权的外界政治干涉的利器。在这种情况下，布什本周对缅甸的慷慨援助（让美国来帮助你！）令人扼腕，因为他刚签署了一项法案，授予被囚禁的缅甸反对派领导人昂山素姬国会金质奖章。
The generals will also have noticed that on the same day Congress passed a resolution condemning their constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10th as “one-sided, undemocratic, and illegitimate”. This is an accurate description of both the process and the constitution the generals want to impose on their people—with such urgency, after 14 years in the drafting, that they have delayed voting in the worst-hit areas by just 14 days. Of course they should postpone the vote. Evil enough in itself as a way of providing some legal cover for the perpetuation of military rule, administering it (and presumably fixing the outcome) is now a distraction from what should be the army’s main task: saving lives. However, pressure from America will not make the junta yield. Instead, it will make it even cagier in handling the offers of aid. Postponement would have a better chance if the neighbours who have maintained good links with the junta—Thailand and, especially, China—added their weight to calls for a suspension.
缅甸军政府肯定也会注意到，美国国会通过了一项法案，谴责他们5月10号的宪法公投为“一边倒的、不民主的、非法的”。这是对军政府企图强加给缅甸人民的 这部宪法及其公投进程的一个精准的评价，经过了14年的起草，军政府已迫不及待，他们只在受灾最为严重的地区将公投日期推迟了仅仅14天。众所周知，他们 应该推迟公投。制定宪法以为其永久军事统治披上合法外衣的行径邪恶至极，将之付诸实施（大概还得应对其后果）偏离了它目前的主要使命：挽救生命。然而，来 自美国的压力不会令缅甸军政府屈服。相反，它会令军政府更加谨慎地对待援助问题。如果与缅甸保持较好关系的邻国——泰国，特别是中国——能够向之施加压力，呼吁暂停公投，那么推迟公投的可能性会更大些。
Please, please help you
救救你吧
Encouraging Myanmar’s rulers to accept more assistance is more than a short-term problem. Partly thanks to Western sanctions, but largely because of its own go-it-alone policies, Myanmar is among the world’s neediest and least-helped countries. Some 30% of its 53m people live below the poverty line. Infant mortality rates are high, at 76 per 1,000 live births. The UN’s World Food Programme says that about one-third of children under five are malnourished. Of children enrolled in primary school, 57% drop out. Yet, at $3 per head a year, Myanmar receives proportionately less foreign aid than does almost any other country. Neighbouring Laos receives almost 20 times as much. The cyclone has added another huge—and long-lasting—burden to Myanmar’s existing misery. Whatever the regime, it needs more long-term humanitarian aid simply to meet basic needs.
督促缅甸统治者接受更多的援助不仅仅是一个短期的问题。这一部分是由于西方的制裁，但主要还是因为缅甸独来独往的政策，它是世界上最为贫困和接受援助最少 的国家之一。缅甸有5300万人口，其中的30%生活在贫困线以下。婴儿死亡率高达7.6%。联合国粮食计划署指出，约有三分之一的五岁以下的儿童营养不 良。缅甸的小学辍学率高达57%。然而，缅甸每年人均接受的援助仅为3美元，几乎是世界上接受外国援助最少的国家。邻国老挝接受的援助几乎是其20倍。此 次风暴向处于水深火热之中的缅甸人施加了又一个巨大的也更为持久的重负。不管什么样的缅甸政权都需要更多的长期的人道主义援助以满足人民的基本生活所需。
Two faint hopes flicker in the sodden gloom left by the cyclone. The first is the possibility that the need for humanitarian help may lead to a renewed engagement with the West. At the very least it might advertise Western expertise, wealth and generosity, and restore some of the influence that has been lost to Myanmar’s big commercial partners in the region. Second, the regime’s shocking, bungling response to the crisis might lead even some of its own members to wonder whether their leaders know what they are doing. The army believes it must stay in power because no other force can hold the country together and run it competently. The cyclone must have brought home to some senior soldiers what most civilians have long known, that this is nonsense.
在风暴过后的满目疮痍里闪烁着两线模糊的希望。第一，对人道援助的需求可能会导致缅甸同西方世界接洽的新途径。至少，它可能向缅甸展示西方的专业、财富和 慷慨，并重建一些对缅甸的影响力，这些影响力为该地区缅甸的主要商业伙伴所取代。第二，缅甸军政府应对此次危机的笨拙的、令人震惊的反应可能会促使一些军 政府官员对其领导人的执政能力产生怀疑。军队认为自己必须掌握国家大权，因为别的力量都无力保持国家的完整并完全掌控它。此次风暴或许会让一些地位较高的 士兵意识到一个大多数平民早就认清的事实——上述军队的观点纯属胡扯。
It is not unprecedented for a natural calamity to bring political change: in 1972, the embezzlement by Anastasio Somoza, Nicaragua’s dictator, and his cronies of aid sent after an earthquake contributed to the unpopularity that eventually toppled him; more recently, the tsunami was instrumental in bringing peace to Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In Myanmar, superstitious generals and civilians alike will have seen the cyclone as a sign of divine impatience hinting at the looming downfall of a tyrannical government. You don’t have to believe in portents to hope that they are right.
自然灾害带来政治上变动并非无先例可循：1972年，尼加拉瓜独裁者安纳斯塔西奥•索摩萨及其同党挪用了地震后的援助物资，结果其政权失去了民心并最终被推翻；更近的，04年南亚海啸为亚齐带来了和平，该地是印度尼西亚的一个特区，位于苏门答腊岛。在缅甸，迷信的军政府领导人及平民都会认为，这次自然风暴暗示了残暴政府的大厦将倾。你大可不必相信这种前兆以期上述说法成为现实。
译者：dgrkl http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=11248&extra=page%3D1