没时间休息

IT HAS taken another catastrophe, this one in China, to show the generals who run Myanmar how better to respond to a natural disaster. Ten days after a cyclone struck Myanmar (formerly Burma) on May 2nd, the xenophobic junta there had managed to ensure that aid from abroad was still only trickling in and most of what had arrived was not being distributed to those who needed it. The United Nations' estimates for the dead and vulnerable were rising dramatically. It was then that a devastating earthquake struck western China. President Hu Jintao at once mobilised soldiers and other workers in an all-out rescue effort. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, arrived in the region within a few hours, making no attempt to play down this “severe disaster” and saying China would gratefully accept international help (see article). The contrast with Myanmar was telling.
又一个灾难，这次轮到了中国，它向那些统治缅甸的将军们展示了如何更好的去面对天灾。五月十二日，袭击缅甸（前缅甸）的那场风暴已经过去了十天，排外的军政府接收的国外援助仍然少得可怜，即便这一点，也远没有发放到需要它们的人手中去。根据联合国的估计，死亡和受害的人数剧增。就在这个时候，一次极具破坏力的地震袭击了中国西部。胡锦涛主席立即命令军人和其他工作人员竭尽全力营救。总理温家宝在几小时后就到达灾区，他没有试图淡化灾难的严重性，并且表示中国怀着巨大的感激之心接受来自国际上的援助。这与缅甸政府的言行形成鲜明对比。

So was the contrast with the China of 1976, when an even deadlier earthquake struck the city of Tangshan. The full awfulness of that event—at least 250,000 people died—was not revealed for months, and offers of foreign help were spurned.
相比1976年的中国，当时袭击唐山市的大地震几乎夺走了全城人的生命。在这场可怕的事件中——至少有二十五万人丧生——消息被封锁了几个月，并且拒绝了来自国外的帮助。

 China's rulers are still proud and sometimes prickly, but for reasons good and bad they have changed. They got a nasty shock, for instance, in 2003 when an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, showed how a virulent new plague, if uncontained, might impose huge costs on a modernising economy. This taught them that burying bad news is not always sensible. A fierce freeze-up this January showed how the weather could also bring paralysis, less economically damaging perhaps but awkward all the same over a great national holiday. This showed them the merits of occasionally admitting imperfection, and even of offering a prime-ministerial apology. Since then they have learnt that beating up their Tibetan citizens may not be wise just as they are trying to impress the world with an Olympic extravaganza.
中国的统治者仍旧骄傲易怒，但理由有好有坏，他们毕竟已经做出了改变。他们曾经背负骂名，例如2003年，当时爆发了一种严重的呼吸系统综合症SARS，这是一种新的烈性瘟疫，如果不加控制可能会让现代经济蒙受巨大损失。这次教训告诉他们，封锁坏消息并不总是明智的。今年一月份的一场冻灾说明气候也可能会令国家陷入瘫痪，为减少经济损失而做出的努力虽然并不雅观，但意义仍高于一个最重要的全国性假日（春节）。这显示他们的长处是偶尔承认错误，甚至会跟出一个总理的道歉。从那时起，他们认识到当他们试图通过一届奥运会来给世界留下深刻印象时，压迫他们的西藏平明也许并不明智。

Such lessons have helped China respond more openly to the country's latest natural disaster. But no similar enlightenment is in store in Myanmar, certainly not soon enough to save the 2m people whose lives may be at risk if they do not receive more help. These people might be surprised to learn that in 2005 a World Summit of the UN endorsed the principle of an international responsibility to protect oppressed people from their persecutors (see article). True, any action taken would require Security Council approval and, true, the principle was adopted with armed oppression in mind. But “crimes against humanity” were specified and, if, say, a third of the 2m now struggling to survive in Myanmar were to die in the coming weeks from hunger and disease because their government refused outside help, that surely would be such a crime.
这样的功课帮助中国在面对最近的自然灾害时，他们的反应更加公开透明。但缅甸没有获得相似的启发，如果他们不接受更多的援助，将肯定无法拯救正处于危难中的两百万人民。这些人民可能会感到惊奇，在2005年的联合国峰会上通过了一项国际准则，认为帮助受害的人民是一项国际义务。诚然，任何行动都需要联合国安理会的授权，也诚然，这项准则采取了一些强制性的措施。但是，“反人类罪”将被明确，如果说，由于政府拒绝援助，在接下来的一周里导致正挣扎在死亡线上的两百万缅甸人民中三分之一因饥饿和疾病死去，那么政府将肯定承担这一罪名。

It would certainly be a stain on the world's conscience, one indeed to rival the genocide in Rwanda, which claimed 700,000 lives. So what can be done? Legally, probably nothing. China and Russia would veto any resolution in the Security Council. Politically, too, any action that defied the generals would be controversial. Myanmar's neighbours are too morally insensible even to rebuke it in the councils of the Association of South-East Asian Nations. So the main task would probably fall to America, France and Britain, the only powers with ships nearby and able to act quickly in defiance of the generals.
这肯定是世界人民心中的一个污点，堪比在种族灭绝行动中屠杀七十万生灵的卢旺达。但是那又怎么样呢？从法律上无能为力，中国和俄罗斯将在安理会中否决任何判决。政治上也是如此，任何挑战军政府的行动都会引起争论。缅甸的邻国们也表现冷漠，甚至不愿在东盟会议上就此提出指责。因此主要任务将落在美国，法国和英国身上，这是仅有的可以接近并蔑视军政府的力量。

As for the practicality of any action, that too is fraught. Unless, heaven forfend, an attempt were made to take over the administration of Myanmar, which would involve an armed invasion, the action would be confined to air drops. One difficulty is that the aircraft doing the dropping might be fired on unless they had military escorts, and that might lead to more fighting than anyone should want to see in a disaster zone. Another difficulty is that the effort to get food and medicines to people without the generals' consent might provoke them to halt even the pathetic flow of aid they are letting in.
任何实质性的行动都不容乐观。否则....但愿这不会发生，一个推翻缅甸现政府的企图会导致军事入侵，类似行动仅限于空投。一个困难是，除非有军事护送，否则空投的飞机可能遭到地面打击，这可能导致其他试图进入灾区的人遭遇更多地战斗。另一个困难是没有得到军政府的同意，擅自向灾民分发食物和药品的行为擅自放他们入境的行为都可能被军政府视为挑衅。

Let them eat words?
Still, unless the generals relent, the attempt is worth making, because air drops might still save some lives, even though many are doomed. The first step should be a resolution in the Security Council. A veto would rob the action of strict legality, but paradoxically, by exposing the cynicism of the junta's apologists, help to gain it legitimacy. Then the drops should start.
尽管多数人的命运已经注定，但是除非军政府态度转变，否则一些想法值得去尝试，因为这毕竟可以拯救一部分生命。第一步首先是安理会做出一项决议，一张否决票足以剥夺这项行动的合法性，但矛盾的是，通过对军政府诡辩的诘责，却帮助其树立了它的合法性。

More storms are forecast for Myanmar. If thousands more people are to die in the coming weeks, let those who oppose any action now, however modest its effect, then explain why they favoured a policy of doing nothing. And let them try to describe the circumstances in which the new-found responsibility to protect might actually be invoke d if it is not just to join the UN's scrapheap of dashed expectations, broken promises and dismal betrayals.
据预测，缅甸将遭遇更大的风暴。如果接下来的数周那里继续有成千上万人丧生，应该让那些反对采取任何行动的温和主义者解释一下为什么他们恩赐的是一个无所作为的政策。并且如果他们仅仅是为了磨洋工和开空头支票而加入联合国废物堆，那么应该让他们试着去描述一下这个他们竭力捍卫的强权政府面临的环境。