英文自修155：没有国籍的人
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转载、翻译、中文标题：武太白
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Thought for the Day 20141105 Rev Lucy Winkett
It’s one of the infrequent rituals that punctuate life growing up. Every ten years, a new passport photograph brings much derision from family and friends, unsmiling as I am staring into the photobooth camera. “ I wouldn’t let you in” is the more typical remark – bringing the luxury of humour to a person who has always had a passport, a birth certificate and ample proof that I am who I say I am. Yesterday, the United Nations Refugee Agency published a report to highlight the fact that there are as many as 10 million people in the world who are stateless. Living without a passport in the drawer, or a birth certificate in an envelope somewhere is a serious problem in a world where proof of our identity is asked for almost every day. Huge global developments such as the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 have had catastrophic effects on families; 370,000 ethnic Russians have no nationality in Estonia and Latvia for example. And many more are fleeing Syria and Iraq without birth certificates, families wrenched apart with no proof of who they are or where they belong. And it’s worse for women: in 27 countries mothers are not legally permitted to pass on their nationality to their children.
这是成长过程中不那么频繁的仪式之一。每过十年，新的护照照片就会带来家人和朋友们的善意玩笑，因为我在拍照的时候总是笑不出来，直瞪着镜头。“我才不让你进呢”，这是更加典型的话——对一个一直有护照、出生证的人来说——有充足证据证明我就是我说的那个人——这句话是一种幽默，也是一种奢侈。昨天，联合国难民署发布了报告，称全球有1000万人没有国籍。抽屉里没有护照、信封里没有出生证，这样在一个几乎每天都需要身份证明的世界里生存下去是个严重的问题。大的国际事件如1991年的前苏·联解体造成过家庭的灾难，如爱沙尼亚和拉托维亚有37万俄罗斯少数族裔就没有了国籍。如今更多的人正在逃离叙利亚和伊拉克，没有出生证，也有家庭四散奔逃，没有证据说明他们是谁，又属于哪里。而对于女性来说情况更糟：有27个国家的法律不允许母亲把自己的国籍传给下一代。
In the UK, the exhaustion of living this life was described by one stateless man who said it was like being a bird with nowhere to rest on the ground, but which can’t spend his whole life in the sky (source UNHCR report on Statelessness published 04/11/14)
在英国，有一个无国籍人士描述了这种生活造成的精疲力竭的状况，他说就好像是一只地面上无处歇脚的鸟，又不能在天空中度过一生（来源：联合国难民组织2014年11月4日发布的无国籍状况报告）。
Rohingya Stateless People
One of the most powerful aspects of the crucifixion of Jesus was that he was executed outside the city walls. Jesus became therefore a non-citizen, a person of no acknowledged identity. For Christians, this scandalous aspect of the gospel story means that there is an inviolable and irreducible worth in every human being, dignified by God’s movement from divinity to criminality, according to the rules of the state.
耶稣受难最强有力的启示之一就是，他是在城墙外受难的。这样以来，耶稣就成了一个非公民，一个没有受认可身份的人。对基督教徒来说，福音故事丑闻般的这一面意味着每一个人都有着不可侵犯的、不可缩减的价值，根据国家的法令，上帝从神圣到罪犯的变动使其变得有尊严。
Which is why statelessness is much more than a mix up over documents or the inevitable consequence of administering complex modern bureaucracies. It is a debilitating and dehumanising price that is paid by many of the poorest people in the world; whose lives are destroyed by the titans that clash above their heads. For many of us, the covenant between ourselves as citizens and the state’s benign protection is something we never examine. For the stateless among us, theirs is a ghostly existence, unable to work or travel, learn or settle, not really knowing if anyone will ever picture and recognise their face.
这也就是为什么无国籍问题不仅是文件混乱或管理复杂现代机构不可避免的结果。这是世界上最贫穷的人所付出的代价，令人心衰力竭、失去人性；他们的生活被在他们头顶上碰撞的巨人所摧毁。对我们中的许多人来说，我们作为公民和国家的保护之间的契约，我们从未认真审视过。对那些无国籍的人，他们的存在犹如幽灵，不能工作、不能旅行，上不了学，无法安居，不知道会不会有人能够描绘并认识他们的面孔。