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本帖最后由 一古斋主 于 2011-9-28 12:35 编辑
【中文标题】幸存者在愤怒和猜疑中等待中国动车事故报告
【原文标题】Anger and Suspicion as Survivors Await Chinese Crash Report
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】SHARON LaFRANIERE
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/2 ... port.html?ref=china
7月23日，一列高速火车在中国温州郊外一座高架桥上撞上了另一列火车的尾部。这次事故让32岁的曹礼恒腹部大量出血、脾和肾破裂、肋骨骨折、踝骨断裂。他依然住在温州的医院中。
事故的幸存者林先生在忍受脑震荡、眼眶骨折、肠穿孔、面部伤害和掉牙的痛苦。
一个农民在事故现场附近的农田中耕作。
一只粉色拖鞋的一半被埋在事故现场附近的泥土中。
撞车事故导致40人死亡，191人受伤。
Pasquale Liguori的22岁女儿Sissy在这次事故中丧生。
7月23日，一列高速火车在中国东部沿海城市郊外一座高架桥上撞上了另一列火车的尾部。这次事故让两个孩子的父亲、38岁的陈力华断掉8跟肋骨、肺部被刺穿、一只膝盖骨粉碎性骨折。他的弟弟由于脑部受伤而丧生。
这仅仅是肉体的伤害，接下来还有心灵的创伤。
陈先生说他在事故中丢失了大约6000美元现金和其它私人物品，但是铁道部仅付给他35美元作为补偿。
他希望被转移到老家福州的一个条件好一些的医院中，但是铁道部把他安排到一个老旧的房子中。那里没有任何医疗条件，而他不得不忍受肺部、后背和其它部位的伤痛。
他说：“我真的想哭，可是已经没有眼泪了。我的家庭已经在事故中失去了一个人，他们怎么可以这样对待我？我的肉体和心灵都饱受折磨。”
在这次造成40人死亡、191人受伤的事故发生两个月之后，政府调查小组原本计划在9月中旬发布事故报告，但目前已经被推迟。据国家新闻机构新华社在星期三报道，原因是“还需要调查和分析很多技术和管理问题”。到现在还没有准确的报告发布日期。
但是幸存者和受伤者们已经得出了自己的结论，他们说长年腐败的铁道部克扣安全方面的投入、救援不力、试图隐藏自身过失的证据，还对受害者摆出冷酷、蔑视的态度。
Pasquale Liguori的女儿在这次事故中丧生，她是来自意大利那不勒斯的外国语学生，同男友第一次到中国来旅游。他说：“他们有自己的小小王国，中国铁道部杀害了我的女儿，他们还想把事实真相隐藏起来。这太令人愤怒了。”
铁道部表态说，他们一直保持很高的安全标准，并未提早结束救援行动，并且在进行完全透明的调查。
铁道部的确是一个封疆大吏，这是从国家掌控一切的时代传承下来的封号。它有200万名员工，仅次于沃尔玛，是全球第四大雇主。它的员工数量相当于除军队和邮政之外的美国联邦政府所有职员的数量。
它自己管理自己的铁路，评论人士认为，这种内在的矛盾滋养了腐败，以赢利和回避责任的名义危害安全。它从不公开发布安全数据，它有自己的法院和警察。
几十年来政府就在讨论分割其运营权和执法权，去年政府也曾经与民航部门商讨过这个问题。但铁道路手中的武器是国家的煤矿运输命脉，以及目前代表中国技术产业皇冠的高铁研发者，因此它轻而易举地拒绝了改革。
北京一位曾经与铁道部打过交道的律师张凯说：“铁道部是一个庞然大物，既是政府机构，又是逐利公司，它可以根据喜好随时转换自己的身份。”
在中国，由于政府过失导致受害者既孤独又无助的现象并不鲜见。中国当局通常都会把政府不作为酿成的事故大而化小，唯恐引起社会不安。
但是，就像事故受害者和其他一些人所说，处理事故的官僚作风还仅仅是问题的一个方面。中国官员已经宣布事故是可以避免的，原因是人为失误和设计有缺陷的信号设备。现在铁道部面临一个两难处境：如果政府的调查报告令人不可信，中国对外出口高铁技术和设备就要面临危机；但是如果官方承认系统缺陷，乘客将会大批流失。
救援过程明显存在问题。北卡罗来纳大学29岁的信息科学专业候选博士生曹雷欧说：“我们对救援工作的开展完全无语，令人发指。”
曹先生说：“他们运来重型机械急力恢复火车运行，在事故现场掩埋车体，而残骸中还有人在挣扎求生。”
中国专家说，救援工作至少应当持续72个小时，但是中国媒体报道，搜寻生还者的工作在8个小时之后就被叫停了。工人开始清理事故残骸，让铁路恢复运行，他们挖了一个大坑埋掉事故车厢。即使在公众疾呼这是掩盖责任的行为之后，大坑又继续被挖了两天。
几张有时间标记的照片显示，一些工人置一具尸体于不顾，集中精力维修铁路，而疯狂的家属们在医院太平间等待消息。一个被困在车厢内的两岁孩子在事发21小时后得救，仅仅是因为地方官员拒绝执行铁道部的命令，继续搜救生还者。
据一家广州报纸《南方周末》的报道，铁道部为事故制定的应急计划强调“抓紧每一分每一秒恢复交通”。事发后不到24小时，它骄傲地宣布温州铁路线已经恢复运行。
如果在其它地方，这样的行为或许会引起法律诉讼，但是铁道部与世隔绝的制度让这成为一种空想。北京的张律师代表一位乘客，他据说因掌掴并猛推两位列车乘务员而被捕。2010年3月，在一场在26位律师和专家认为是非法的审判之后，铁路法院判处这位乘客三年徒刑。张先生说：“法院首要的目的是保护铁道部的利益。”
在事故受害者家人进行了抗议之后，政府把赔偿金额提高到14.5万美元。李国瑞先生拒绝接受这笔赔偿，他说这是对他女儿Assunta生命尊严的侮辱。但是一位中国律师在给他的邮件中写道：“……任何形式的抗议基本上是浪费时间。”
据六七个受害者家属说，最令人不能接受的是铁道部官员们蛮横的态度。陈先生说，赔偿小组组长吴彦堂对他的妻子破口大骂，还威胁他如果继续要求赔偿，就不让他转回家乡的医院。他说：“他的态度让我想起了黑社会，我的心拔凉拔凉的啊。”
吴先生说：“我们根据规定对每一个人都公平对待。”
林明明说他曾经抗议脑部受伤的父亲被转移到一所老旧的房子中，与陈先生待在一起。但是他得到的答复是：“这是一个政治问题，你没有其它选择。”
一些受害者还在努力抗争。曹先生的父母依然被在温州第二人民医院的太平间中，他和他的哥哥正在寻求法律援助。32岁的曹礼恒腹部大量出血、脾和肾破裂、肋骨骨折、踝骨断裂。他依然住在温州的医院中。
来自科泉市的企业家曹先生说：“这场事故夺去了我亲爱的父母的生命，摧毁了我的健康，让整个家庭的未来一片黑暗。我想要的仅仅是公平和正义，但是这里似乎没有人尊重这些基本的原则。”
原文：
When a high-speed train rammed into the rear of a second train on July 23 on a viaduct outside Wenzhou, China, the impact gave Henry Liheng Cao, 32, a massive abdominal hemorrhage, a ruptured spleen and kidney, broken ribs and a fractured ankle. He remains hospitalized in Wenzhou.
A survivor of the crash, who wanted to known only as Mr. Lin, suffered a concussion, broken eye socket, punctured intestines, other head and facial injuries and lost several teeth.
A farmer tilled his land near the site of the train crash.
A pink slipper was half buried in the earth near the site.
The rail crash killed 40 people and injured 191 others.
WENZHOU, China — When a high-speed train rammed into the rear of a second train on July 23 on a viaduct outside this eastern coastal city, the impact cost Chen Lihua, a 38-year-old father of two, eight broken ribs, a punctured lung and one shattered kneecap. His brother died of head wounds.
Those were the injuries. The insults came later.
Mr. Chen said he lost roughly $6,000 in cash and other belongings in the accident. The railways ministry paid him a mere $35.
He asked to be transferred from a Wenzhou hospital to a better hospital in the city of Fuzhou, his hometown. Instead, the ministry moved him to an old-age home, where he receives no medical treatment, despite continuing lung trouble, back pain and other ailments due to his injuries.
“I want to cry, but I have no tears left,” he said. “Our family has already lost someone in this accident. How can they treat us like this? I am being tortured both physically and mentally.”
Almost two months after the rail crash killed 40 people and injured 191 others, the findings of a government investigation panel, originally to be released in mid-September, will not be made public until later because ‘‘many more technical and managerial problems need to be investigated and analyzed,’’ Xinhua, the state news agency, reported Wednesday. No new release date was offered.
But the injured and the survivors of the dead say they have already reached their own conclusions. They say the Railways Ministry, which has a long history of corruption, skimped on safety, bungled the rescue effort, tried to hide the extent of its failings and showed a callous disregard for victims.
“They are their own little nation,” said Pasquale Liguori, who lost his daughter, a foreign-language student from Naples, Italy, who was on her first visit to China with her boyfriend. “The China Railways Ministry killed my daughter, and they want to hide everything that happened. It is revolting.”
The ministry has said it upholds high safety standards, did not prematurely end the rescue and is participating in a transparent investigation.
The ministry is indeed a fief, a holdover from the era when the state controlled all. With two million workers, it is perhaps the world’s fourth-largest employer, behind Wal-Mart. Its work force matches that of the entire United States federal government, excluding military and postal workers.
It owns the railways it regulates, a built-in conflict that critics say encourages corruption, endangers safety in the name of profit and hinders accountability. Its safety data are not publicly released. It runs its own court system and, until recently, its own police force.
The government has for over a decade discussed dividing the ministry’s business and regulatory functions, as it did years ago with the civil aviation industry. But using its clout as the nation’s mover of coal — and now, as the developer of high-speed rail into one of China’s technological and industrial crown jewels — the rail ministry has adroitly fended off reform.
“The ministry is a monster, half government agency, half for-profit company,” said Zhang Kai, a Beijing lawyer who has faced off against the ministry. “It can choose to behave like either one.”
It is not unusual for victims of government mishaps in China to find themselves isolated and helpless. Chinese authorities typically minimize events that suggest government incompetence lest they encourage social unrest.
But as crash victims and others tell it, the bureaucracy’s handling of the crash is a case in itself. Chinese officials have already declared that the disaster was preventable, caused by human error and poorly designed signal equipment. Now the ministry faces a dilemma: if the government’s investigation does not appear credible, it could hurt the ministry’s chances to export high-speed rail equipment and technology. But any admission of systemic flaws might also scare away customers.
The rescue effort seems clearly mismanaged. “We are utterly speechless and horrified by how the rescue operation was handled,” said Leo Cao, 29, a Ph.D. candidate in information science at the University of North Carolina. His parents were killed and his brother was critically injured in the crash.
“They brought in heavy machinery to restore train operations and to bury train sections at the scene while there were still human beings struggling for life in the wreckage,” Mr. Cao said.
Chinese experts said rescue efforts should have continued for at least 72 hours, but the Chinese news media reported that the search for survivors was called off after less than eight hours. Instead, workers cleared wreckage so rail traffic could resume, including digging a pit to bury a carriage of one of the trains involved in the accident. It was dug up two days later after a public outcry alleging a cover-up.
Time-stamped photographs show that workers left a corpse unattended on the ground for 90 minutes, focusing on repairs, while frantic relatives waited for news at hospital morgues. A 2-year-old, trapped in a crushed carriage, was rescued 21 hours after the accident only because some local officials ignored the ministry’s orders and continued to search the wreckage.
The ministry’s own contingency plan for accidents emphasizes the need to “seize every minute and second to restore the traffic,” according to Southern Weekly, a Guangzhou newspaper. Less than 24 hours after the accident, it proudly announced that the Wenzhou line was again open for business.
Elsewhere, such conduct might fuel lawsuits, but the ministry’s insular system shields it. Mr. Zhang, the Beijing lawyer, represented a rail passenger who was arrested by railways police officers for allegedly slapping a conductor and shoving another. After a trial that 26 lawyers and academics charged was rigged, a railways court sentenced the passenger in March 2010 to three years in prison. “The No. 1 mission of the court is to protect the interests of the ministry,” Mr. Zhang said.
After families who lost relatives in the Wenzhou crash protested, officials increased the government’s offer of compensation to families to about $145,000. Mr. Liguori refused the offer, calling it an insult to the dignity of his daughter, Assunta. But a Chinese lawyer advised him in an e-mail that “any appeal is basically a waste of time.”
Most worrisome, half a dozen victims or their relatives said, is the imperious attitude of the ministry officials. Mr. Chen said Wu Yantang, the compensation team’s head, cursed his wife and threatened to block his transfer to his hometown hospital if he continued to press for compensation. “His attitude reminded me of the mafia,” he said. “It chilled our hearts.”
Mr. Wu said, “Everyone was treated fairly according to the regulations.”
Lin Mingming said he protested the transfer of his father, who suffered major head injuries, to an old-age home with Mr. Chen. But he said he was told: “This is a political issue. You have no other choice.”
Some victims are pushing back. Mr. Cao’s parents remain in the morgue of Wenzhou People’s Hospital No. 2 while he and his brother seek legal advice. His brother, Henry Liheng Cao, 32, suffered a massive abdominal hemorrhage, a ruptured spleen and kidney, broken ribs and a fractured ankle. He remains hospitalized in Wenzhou.
“This train crash took the lives of my beloved parents, wrecked my good health and threw the future of my family into jeopardy,” said Henry Cao, an entrepreneur from Colorado Springs. “Fairness and justice is all that I ask. There are serious doubts whether such basic tenets are obtainable here.”
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狗仔卡
发表于 2011-9-27 09:21
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发表于 2011-9-27 13:58
