美国国家公共电台 NPR 尼日利亚再次发生恶性学校绑架事件

Gunmen kidnapped children and teachers from an elementary school in northwestern Nigeria on Monday. It's the latest in a series of attacks on educational institutions. And they have grown more brazen¹ since 2014 when a group of schoolgirls were abducted² by the militant³ group Boko Haram. Joe Parkinson is Africa bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. He described how another group of students, this time college-aged, were taken this past weekend. But first, note that some listeners may find the details disturbing.

周一，持枪歹徒绑架了尼日利亚西北部一所小学的儿童和教师。这是针对教育机构的一系列袭击中的最新一起。自2014年一群女学生被激进组织“博科圣地”绑架以来，歹徒变得更加厚颜无耻。乔·帕金森是《华尔街日报》非洲分社社长。他讲述了上周末另一组学生被绑架的经过，这次遇袭的是大学生。但首先，我们要提醒一下，有些听众可能会发现绑架细节令人不安。

JOE PARKINSON: They were seized by armed men in the early hours of Friday night. And within just a few hours on Saturday morning, what's now become a very familiar choreography played out. The kidnappers⁴ released a video with the schoolchildren in a forest, somewhere very difficult to determine. But we know it's somewhere in Nigeria's northwest. And the children themselves were asking the government to pay a ransom⁵ — in this case, 500 million naira. It's about $1.2 million. The video then went in a very dark direction where the masked men with Kalashnikovs who were walking around the children started to beat them with bullwhips. And they were shrieking⁶ out by the end of the video, just do what these men ask. So this has become all too familiar a choreography for Nigerians. We've seen more than 800 schoolchildren kidnapped in four separate attacks in recent months.

乔·帕金森：这些学生在周五凌晨被武装人员抓走。而在周六早上短短几个小时内，现在人们已经非常熟悉的编排开始上演。绑匪在一个很难确定位置的森林里发布了一段与学生们在一起的视频。但我们知道那片森林位于尼日利亚西北部的某个地方。孩子们自己也要求政府支付赎金，在这起事件中，赎金是5亿奈拉。这大约是120万美元。视频随后转入非常黑暗的方向，手持卡拉什尼科夫冲锋枪的蒙面男子站在被绑孩子的周围，并开始用鞭子殴打他们。视频结束时，孩子们尖叫着说“照绑匪说的做”。这一发展对尼日利亚人来说已经非常熟悉。最近几个月发生的四次不同袭击中有800多名学童被绑架。

MARTINEZ: Wow. What's motivating all these kidnappings that keep happening? I mean, who's behind them?

马丁内斯：哇哦。是什么促使这些绑架事件不断发生？幕后黑手是谁？

PARKINSON: Well, kidnapping in Nigeria is not a new phenomenon. But it's got worse. And it's moved much more in the direction of poor people and schoolchildren. So the northwest of Nigeria is an impoverished⁷ part of the country. And actually, it's suffering from a real sort of degradation⁸ of the state. Nigeria is fighting numerous insurgencies on different fronts, particularly in the northeast, against Boko Haram. And the security services there just don't have the capacity. And so into that power vacuum these groups, these criminal groups, have moved. And they're exploiting it. There's something which is behind this as well, which is longer term, which is ethnic⁹ clashes between different groups in the northwest.

帕金森：绑架在尼日利亚并非新现象。但情况越来越糟糕。现在绑架的目标基本上转向穷人和学生。尼日利亚西北部是该国的贫困地区。实际上，尼日利亚正在遭受一种真正的国家退化。尼日利亚正在不同战线对抗众多叛乱组织，尤其是东北部地区，他们正在那里对抗博科圣地。当地安全部门根本没有能力。这导致出现权力真空状态，这些犯罪集团就借此开始行动。他们正在利用这一点。这背后还涉及持续时间更长的问题，即西北部地区不同族群之间的种族冲突。

Many of the people who are part of these criminal groups are from the Fulani ethnic group, who are traditionally nomadic¹⁰ herders. And they've been clashing with Hausa community farmers, sedentary farmers. And these clashes have become more and more deadly, more and more murderous. Both sides have armed themselves. And the Fulani groups especially have become much more sophisticated and have gotten really into the kidnapping business in recent times. But the school kidnapping, the mass kidnapping of schoolchildren, is really something that's just started happening in the last six months.

这些犯罪团伙中的多数人来自富拉尼族，这个民族历来是游牧牧民。他们和定居在豪萨社区的农民发生了冲突。现在这些冲突变得越来越致命，也越来越凶残。双方都配备了武器。尤其是富拉尼族已经愈加老练，最近一段时间更是开始了绑架“生意”。但校园绑架和大规模绑架学童事件，确实是最近六个月才开始发生的事情。

MARTINEZ: And how has the government responded?

马丁内斯：政府作何回应？

PARKINSON: Well, the government over the last few days has just really started to move and pledged a huge deployment¹¹ of troops to the northwest. Some 6,000 soldiers are going to be moving in there. But a lot of people are saying it's too little, too late. These groups have really, really grown in capacity. They've been buying a lot of weapons from the countries that border Nigeria, which are suffering from their own insecurity — Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and even guns coming down from Libya. What's remarkable¹² is 800 students have been kidnapped. And not one minister, not one governor, not one senior official has apologized or has resigned. And so it's kind of difficult to sort of stocktake just the enormity of this. It's — you can't really imagine much more of a metric for state failure than the mass kidnapping of children in a place where they should be safe.

帕金森：政府在过去几天才真正开始行动，并承诺在西北部地区大规模部署军队。大约6000名士兵将进驻该地区。但是许多人认为部署军力太少，而且政府行动的时机太晚。犯罪集团的能力在不断增长。他们从尼日尔、马里、布基法纳索等尼日利亚邻国购买了大量武器，甚至还有从利比亚购买枪支，而这些邻国本身也在遭受不安全的折磨。值得注意的是，有800名学生被绑架。但没有一名部长、州长或是高级官员道歉或辞职。因此很难评估这件事的严重性。儿童在本该安全的地方遭遇大规模绑架，真的很难想象还有什么比这更能衡量一个国家的失败。

MARTINEZ: Joe Parkinson, co-author of the book "Bring Back Our Girls" and The Wall Street Journal's Africa bureau chief. Joe, thanks a lot.

马丁内斯：以上是书籍《把我们的女孩带回来》作者兼《华尔街日报》非洲分社社长乔·帕金森带来的报道。乔，非常谢谢你。

PARKINSON: Thank you so much.

帕金森：非常感谢。

1 brazen   

adj.厚脸皮的，无耻的，坚硬的

参考例句：

• The brazen woman laughed loudly at the judge who sentenced her.那无耻的女子冲着给她判刑的法官高声大笑。
• Some people prefer to brazen a thing out rather than admit defeat.有的人不愿承认失败，而是宁肯厚着脸皮干下去。

2 abducted   

劫持，诱拐( abduct的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（肢体等）外展

参考例句：

• Detectives have not ruled out the possibility that she was abducted. 侦探尚未排除她被绑架的可能性。
• The kid was abducted at the gate of kindergarten. 那小孩在幼儿园大门口被绑架走了。

3 militant   

adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士

参考例句：

• Some militant leaders want to merge with white radicals.一些好斗的领导人要和白人中的激进派联合。
• He is a militant in the movement.他在那次运动中是个激进人物。

4 kidnappers   

n.拐子，绑匪( kidnapper的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They were freed yesterday by their kidnappers unharmed. 他们昨天被绑架者释放了，没有受到伤害。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The kidnappers had threatened to behead all four unless their jailed comrades were released. 帮匪们曾经威胁说如果印度方面不释放他们的同伙，他们就要将这四名人质全部斩首。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 ransom   

n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救

参考例句：

• We'd better arrange the ransom right away.我们最好马上把索取赎金的事安排好。
• The kidnappers exacted a ransom of 10000 from the family.绑架者向这家人家勒索10000英镑的赎金。

6 shrieking   

v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The boxers were goaded on by the shrieking crowd. 拳击运动员听见观众的喊叫就来劲儿了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• They were all shrieking with laughter. 他们都发出了尖锐的笑声。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 impoverished   

adj.穷困的，无力的，用尽了的v.使（某人）贫穷( impoverish的过去式和过去分词 )；使（某物）贫瘠或恶化

参考例句：

• the impoverished areas of the city 这个城市的贫民区
• They were impoverished by a prolonged spell of unemployment. 他们因长期失业而一贫如洗。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 degradation   

n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变

参考例句：

• There are serious problems of land degradation in some arid zones.在一些干旱地带存在严重的土地退化问题。
• Gambling is always coupled with degradation.赌博总是与堕落相联系。

9 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

10 nomadic   

adj.流浪的；游牧的

参考例句：

• This tribe still live a nomadic life.这个民族仍然过着游牧生活。
• The plowing culture and the nomadic culture are two traditional principal cultures in China.农耕文化与游牧文化是我国传统的两大主体文化。

11 deployment   

n. 部署,展开

参考例句：

• He has inquired out the deployment of the enemy troops. 他已查出敌军的兵力部署情况。
• Quality function deployment (QFD) is a widely used customer-driven quality, design and manufacturing management tool. 质量功能展开(quality function deployment,QFD)是一个广泛应用的顾客需求驱动的设计、制造和质量管理工具。

12 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。