【英语语言学习】神秘消失的船只

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Hundreds of thousands of people have undertaken dangerous trips across the Mediterranean¹ to flee war and suffering. And last summer, one of these boats just disappeared. Two-hundred-and-forty-three souls were aboard - men, women and children - trying to sail from Libya to Italy. But the boat just seemed to vanish.

A group of journalists from the online journal Medium has launched an investigation² of what they're calling the Ghost Boat, and they hope to get help from their readers using online tools. Eric Reidy joins us from his base in Tunis, Tunisia. Thanks so much for being with us.

ERIC REIDY: Hi, Scott. Thanks for having me.

SIMON: I mean, 243 people is - you would think something would break given the size of that group.

REIDY: Yeah, that's one of the kind of strange things about the case. If these people were alive, it's rare that - 243 people - one of them wouldn't have been able to contact one of their family members at this point.

SIMON: If they had, would you hope that this project could find that out?

REIDY: So I'm in pretty close contact with a number of the family members. So if they had contacted the family members, we would know. The Eritrean diaspora is very interconnected.

SIMON: When you refer to the Eritrea diaspora, that refers to the fact that many of the people on board this boat were Eritrean?

REIDY: Yes, exactly. So of the 243, the vast majority of them were from Eritrea. And about 5,000 people flee the country a month in order to avoid repressive military service and forced labor³ and other types of human rights violations⁴.

SIMON: Do you know what happened, or can you say what didn't happen?

REIDY: So far, we don't know what happened. There are two main theories at this point. One is that the boat sank and, for whatever reason, there is no forensic⁵ evidence. There were no bodies recovered. There was no wreckage⁶ from the ship, which would be something pretty rare and pretty strange given the amount of surveillance and the rescue operations that exist in the Mediterranean.

And the other theory is based on a series of phone calls that took place between one of the family members of a person who was on the boat and a Tunisian phone number, where the person on the other end of the Tunisian phone number claimed to be a prison guard or someone working in a prison in Tunisia and said that these people were alive and in prison in Tunisia.

SIMON: Can a thing like that be checked, or how difficult is it to check a thing like that?

REIDY: It's pretty difficult. The migration⁷ detention⁸ practices in Tunisia are a bit lacking in transparency, to put it nicely. But there are different ways that we're looking into it. For example, I have the phone numbers that the phone conversations took place on, and we're also looking at different ways to use data journalism⁹ to try to confirm whether the people were actually in Tunisia at some point or not.

SIMON: What would you like from members of the general public?

REIDY: For members of the general public, I would like for people to stay engaged in the story, first of all. I mean, one of the comparisons that came up from Yafet, who is the Eritrean man whose wife went missing on this boat who I've been communicating with in the first episode¹⁰ of the series about. One of the comparisons that he made when I spoke¹¹ to him last January, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, was that, you know, 14 people were killed in Paris and the whole world talked about it for two weeks.

But 240 people go missing in the Mediterranean and there hasn't been one news story about it. There's nobody helping¹² in the search. And he asked, why is that? Is it because we're black? So I guess the first thing that would like is for people to be engaged in this story as a way of understanding that there's kind of this monumental movement of people taking place across the Mediterranean and people risking, you know, pretty much everything they have in order to have the opportunity at a better life.

SIMON: Eric Reidy. The project is called Ghost Boat, and you can find a link to it on our website. Thanks so much for being with us.

REIDY: Thank you very much, Scott.

1 Mediterranean   

adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的

参考例句：

• The houses are Mediterranean in character.这些房子都属地中海风格。
• Gibraltar is the key to the Mediterranean.直布罗陀是地中海的要冲。

2 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

3 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

4 violations   

违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸

参考例句：

• This is one of the commonest traffic violations. 这是常见的违反交通规则之例。
• These violations of the code must cease forthwith. 这些违犯法规的行为必须立即停止。

5 forensic   

adj.法庭的，雄辩的

参考例句：

• The report included his interpretation of the forensic evidence.该报告包括他对法庭证据的诠释。
• The judge concluded the proceeding on 10:30 Am after one hour of forensic debate.经过近一个小时的法庭辩论后，法官于10时30分宣布休庭。

6 wreckage   

n.（失事飞机等的）残骸，破坏，毁坏

参考例句：

• They hauled him clear of the wreckage.他们把他从形骸中拖出来。
• New states were born out of the wreckage of old colonial empires.新生国家从老殖民帝国的废墟中诞生。

7 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

8 detention   

n.滞留，停留；拘留，扣留；(教育)留下

参考例句：

• He was kept in detention by the police.他被警察扣留了。
• He was in detention in connection with the bribery affair.他因与贿赂事件有牵连而被拘留了。

9 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

10 episode   

n.（作品的一段）情节，插曲，系列事件中之一

参考例句：

• The episode was a huge embarrassment for all concerned.这段小插曲令所有有关人员都感到非常尴尬。
• This episode remains sharply engraved on my mind.这段经历至今仍深深地铭刻在我的心中。

11 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

12 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。