POIPET, Cambodia— One thinks of slavery as an evil confined to musty sepia photographs. But there are 21st-century versions of slaves as well, girls like Srey Neth.
波贝，柬埔寨——你可能认为奴隶制是仅见于发霉泛黑的照片里的罪恶。但是21世纪版的奴隶也是有的，如Srey Neth这样的女孩们。
I met Srey Neth, a lovely, giggly wisp of a teenager, here in the wild smuggling town of Poipet in northwestern Cambodia. Girls here are bought and sold, but there is an important difference compared with the 19th century: many of these modern slaves will be dead of AIDS by their 20′s.
我在柬埔寨西北部一座走私猖獗的波贝小镇见到Srey，一个可爱的、咯咯笑的、纤瘦的十几岁少女。女孩们在这里被买进卖出，但与19世纪相比，重要的区别在于：她们中的许多人将在二十几岁死于艾滋病。
Some 700,000 people are trafficked around the world each year, many of them just girls. They form part of what I believe will be the paramount moral challenge we will face in this century: to address the brutality that is the lot of so many women in the developing world. Yet it’s an issue that gets little attention and that most American women’s groups have done shamefully little to address.
全球每年的人口交易量约70万，其中许多是女孩。她们构成了我所认为的我们在这个世纪面临的最大的道德挑战的一部分，这一挑战就是：对付发展中国家世界里成为如此之多的妇女们命运的残暴行为。但是这一问题没有得到多少关注，而美国的大部分妇女团体在这方面的贡献少得可耻。
Poipet, 220 miles on bouncy roads from Phnom Penh, is a dusty collection of dirt alleys lined with brothels, where teenage girls clutch at any man walking by. It has a reputation as one of the wildest places in Cambodia, an anything-goes town ruled by drugs, gangs, gambling and prostitution.
波贝坐落在颠簸不平的路旁，距
金边220英里，由肮脏的的小巷子凑成灰蒙蒙的一片。小巷里妓院林立，十几岁的女孩们试图抓住任何一位走过的男子。波贝号称柬埔寨最野蛮的地区之一，无奇不有，毒品、黑帮、赌博和卖淫大行其道。
The only way to have access to the girls is to appear to be a customer. So I put out the word that I wanted to meet young girls and stayed at the seedy $8-a-night Phnom Pich Guest House — and a woman who is a pimp soon brought Srey Neth to my room.
想要接近这些女孩，唯一的途径就是以顾客的身份出现。所以我讲要见年轻女子，留在了邋里邋遢的8美金一晚的金边客栈——一位女皮条客很快把Srey Neth带进了我房间。
Srey Neth claimed to be 18 but looked several years younger. She insisted at first (through my Khmer interpreter) that she was free and not controlled by the guesthouse. But soon she told her real story: a female cousin had arranged her sale and taken her to the guesthouse. Now she was sharing a room with three other prostitutes, and they were all pimped to guests.
Srey Neth声称自己18了，但看起来还要小几岁。她一开始坚称（通过我的高棉语翻译）自己是自由人，不受客栈控制。但很快她就讲了自己的真实故事：一位堂姐安排出售了她，把她带到客栈。她现与另外三名妓女住一间屋子，都是通过皮条客来卖身。
”I can walk around in Poipet, but only with a close relative of the owner,” she said. ”They keep me under close watch.They do not let me go out alone. They’re afraid I would run away.”
“我可以在波贝随处走动，但必须有主人的一位近亲相伴才行，”她说，“他们监视得很严。他们不让我单独出去。他们怕我会跑掉。”
Why not try to escape at night?
为什么不趁夜晚逃走呢？
”They would get me back, and something bad would happen. Maybe a beating. I heard that when a group of girls tried to escape, they locked them in the rooms and beat them up.”
“他们会把我抓回来，然后坏事就要发生了。可能是一顿打。我听说有一群女孩试着逃走，被他们锁在屋子里狠揍。”
”What about the police?” I asked. ”Couldn’t you call out to the police for help?”
“警察呢？”我问，“你不能找警察帮你吗？”
”The police wouldn’t help me because they get bribes from the brothel owners,” Srey Neth said, adding that senior police officials had come to the guesthouse for sex with her.
“警察不会帮我，因为他们从妓院老板那里收取贿赂，”Srey Neth说，并补充说警局的高级长官就曾来到客栈和她发生性关系。
I asked Srey Neth how much it would cost to buy her freedom. She named an amount equivalent to $150.
我问Srey Neth要多少钱能替她赎回自由。她讲的价格相当于150美金。
”Do you really want to leave?” I asked. ”Are you sure you wouldn’t come back to this?”
“你想离开这儿吗？”我问，“你确定自己不会再回来这里？”
She had been watching TV and listlessly answering my questions. Now she turned abruptly and snorted. ”This is a hell,” she said sharply, speaking with passion for the first time. ”You think I want to do this?”
她一直在看着电视，无精打采地回答着我的问题。现在她猛地转过身来哼着鼻子，“这是座地狱，”她尖声叫着，第一次带着热情讲话，“你以为我想干这个？”
Another girl, Srey Mom, grabbed at me as I walked down the street. She wouldn’t let go, tugging me toward the inner depths of her brothel — but she looked so young and pitiable that I couldn’t help thinking that she really wanted me to tug her away.
另一个女孩，Srey Mom，当我走在街上时抓住了我。她不松手，使劲把我往她的妓院深处拽——但她看起来如此年轻又引人怜悯，以至于我忍不住去想她是想让我把她拽走。
So I did. I paid the owner $8 to spring her for the evening and then took her away for an interview. (Photographs of both girls are at
www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
The owner let Srey Mom go out unsupervised, it turned out, partly because she had been a prostitute for several years and was trusted to return — and partly because her dark complexion meant that she was of little value anyway. The brothel sold her to men for just $2.50, compared with the $10 commanded by the lighter-skinned Srey Neth.
老板没派人盯着就让Srey Mom出来了，原来，部分地是由于她已做了几年的妓女，老板相信她会回来——也部分由于她的阴暗面容意味着她已没有多少价值了。妓院把她卖给男人一次只收2.5美金，相比之下，肤色较亮的Srey Neth就要10美金一次。
I asked Srey Mom what her freedom would cost. Payment of about $70 in debts to her brothel owner, she said. Two girls in her brothel had been freed after they found boyfriends who paid their debts, she said, and she spoke of her longing to see her sisters and the rest of her family in her village on the other side of Cambodia.
我问Srey Mom她的赎身费要多少。付清欠妓院老板的70美金债务，她说。她所在的妓院已有两名女孩在找到男友还掉债后得到自由，她说，还谈起她与在那座位于柬埔寨另一边的小村子里的姐妹和家里其他人相见的渴望。
”Do you really want to leave the brothel?” I asked.
“你真的想离开这里吗？”我问。
”I love myself,” she answered simply. ”I do not want to let my life be destroyed by what I’m doing now.”
“我懂得自爱，”她简洁地回答，“我不想让我现在做的事情毁了我的一生。”
That’s when I made a firm decision I’d been toying with for some time: I would try to buy freedom for these two girls and return them to their families. I’ll tell you in my column on Wednesday what happens next.
就在此刻，我下定决心作出了已经漫不经心考虑了一些时间的决定：我要努力为这两位女孩买来自由，把她们送回各自的家庭。接下来发生了什么，我会在周三我的专栏里告诉你。
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原文链接:" [url]http://article.yeeyan.org/view/126941/143344"[/url]
作者: juliansue
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