2006年VOA标准英语-Wounds of War Haunt Uganda's Children
时间:2019-01-09 作者:英语课 分类:2006年VOA标准英语(一月)
By Noel King
Juba, Sudan
13 January 2006
One year ago, southern Sudan ended a two decade civil war with the ruling northern Islamist government. But one conflict in south Sudan persists. The Lord's Resistance Army, a band of rogue 1 Ugandan rebels intent on toppling the Ugandan government, is kidnapping and enslaving children in southern Sudan and Uganda. The rebels often retreat to southern Sudan when Ugandan police close in. Children who escape the clutches of the rebels are traumatized by the things they have seen and done.
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A group of homeless children in Juba
The southern Sudanese capital city of Juba has become something of a way-station for children who have escaped from the Lord's Resistance Army. Children who have been forced into combat and sex slavery, attempt to rehabilitate 3 at the Toto Chan Child Trauma 2 Center before returning to their families. But they will live in fear of their former captors, years after their experiece.
The Lord's Resistance Army is led by Joseph Kony, a mystic who calls himself a messiah. Most refer to Kony as a madman who claims he wants Uganda to be run under the governing principal of the 10 Commandments, but his forces are guided by the principal of "kill or be killed."
A young boy sits on the verandah of the St. Joseph Hospital in Kitgum, Uganda
The rebels are known for terrorizing villages and taking captives. Their tactics include forcing kids to kill their families before they are spirited into the bush, enslaving kidnapped girls as soldiers "wives," and hacking 4 off the lips and ears of those Kony believes have betrayed him.
Jim Long John is Director of the Toto Chan center, an international organization for children. In south Sudan, children who have escaped from the rebels are sheltered at Toto Chan, while officials try to get in contact with their families. Since 1997 the center has helped rehabilitate and return about three-thousand abducted 5 children.
Long John explains that children are Kony's primary target because of their youth.
"He uses children, especially illiterate 6 ones, for one good reason," said Jim Long John. "They can desperately 7 fight, because once they are horrified 8 by him, killed and brutalized, the rest will not want to die. So they will seriously fight for him for protection. If any of them is captured they will not expose anything. Simply, with the belief that if they do, if Kony meets them again, he will kill them."
Long John says that because children are superstitious 9 and easily bullied 10, Kony considers them a perfect fighting force.
Angela Achero is a social worker in Toto Chan. She says trust is incredibly difficult for children who come to the center.
"These children, they come traumatized, they come wounded, malnourished, naked; they come in rags," said Angela Achero. "They do not want to talk. They keep on changing names. They give different names. Then after two or three days when they see you are the real person that can really help them, they come to you, they say, you know, the name I have given to you is not my real name. My real name is so-and-so."
Achero says she does her best to make the children at Toto Chan feel safe, but she believes they all need a lot of counseling.
Twelve-year-old Elobo Estella was snatched from her family's hut at night. She was given to a rebel's so-called wife to help with the young woman's children. The wife too, had been kidnapped as a young girl.
After Elobo was rescued by Sudanese soldiers on Christmas Day she came to Toto Chan. There, she tells visitors of the day when she saw Joseph Kony finally trapped by Ugandan forces.
"They had captured him in the bush," she said. "He fell to the ground and turned into an old man. The police looked at him and did not know what to do with this old man. So they let him go, she says. When the soldiers had left, Elobo says, Kony turned again into himself. "
Social workers at Toto Chan say Elobo insists that the story is true. They say the tale illustrates 11 the hold that Kony has over the minds of his young captives.
Thirteen-year-old Ayom Helen does not remember how old she was when she was taken, but she does remember the day the rebels raided her village.
"I and the other children were grinding flour on the mountainside," said Ayom Helen. "They took the children to the village. They took the villagers and brought them back up to the mountain. All the boys were taken away and shot. Then the rest were shot, even the elderly people, and the mothers. All but a few girls. We got to a stream and they told them to wash, but not to talk or they would be killed."
Ayom, too, was enslaved by an LRA soldier as a babysitter because she was too young to be a wife.
The children at Toto Chan are forthcoming with visitors. But there is one question none of them will answer. What do they want to do when they get older? There is always a minute of strained silence after the question is asked.
Social workers here say it will take time for the children to realize that they are safe and that they have a future without terror to look forward to.
- The little rogue had his grandpa's glasses on.这淘气鬼带上了他祖父的眼镜。
- They defined him as a rogue.他们确定他为骗子。
- Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
- The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。
- There was no money to rehabilitate the tower.没有资金修复那座塔。
- He used exercise programmes to rehabilitate the patients.他采用体育锻炼疗法使患者恢复健康。
- The patient with emphysema is hacking all day. 这个肺气肿病人整天不断地干咳。
- We undertook the task of hacking our way through the jungle. 我们负责在丛林中开路。
- 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。
- There are still many illiterate people in our country.在我国还有许多文盲。
- I was an illiterate in the old society,but now I can read.我这个旧社会的文盲,今天也认字了。
- He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
- He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。
- The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
- We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。
- They aim to deliver the people who are in bondage to superstitious belief.他们的目的在于解脱那些受迷信束缚的人。
- These superstitious practices should be abolished as soon as possible.这些迷信做法应尽早取消。
- My son is being bullied at school. 我儿子在学校里受欺负。
- The boy bullied the small girl into giving him all her money. 那男孩威逼那个小女孩把所有的钱都给他。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- This historical novel illustrates the breaking up of feudal society in microcosm. 这部历史小说是走向崩溃的封建社会的缩影。
- Alfred Adler, a famous doctor, had an experience which illustrates this. 阿尔弗莱德 - 阿德勒是一位著名的医生,他有过可以说明这点的经历。 来自中级百科部分