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Prabhakaran
南亚枭雄：普拉巴卡兰
May 21st 2009
From The Economist print edition
Velupillai Prabhakaran, commander of the Tamil Tigers, died on May 18th, aged 54
韦卢皮莱·普拉巴卡兰，泰米尔猛虎解放组织首领，死于五月十八日，卒年五十四岁
THE body of the young man lay on a scarlet bier. He was in his colonel’s uniform and beret, with white gloves that made his hands seem enormous beside his emaciated body. His face was set in a rictus of death that was somewhat like a smile. But the portly, mustachioed man who stood looking at him, in a short-sleeved white shirt and blue trousers, hands clasped awkwardly in front of him, was not smiling.
这具年轻男尸就躺在猩红色的棺椁里面。他穿着陆军上校制服，戴着贝雷帽，与憔悴的躯体相比，双手因为有了白手套的掩护，似乎显得过于肥大。他的面容带着亡故后的张嘴结舌，有点像在微笑。立在边上的那个男人长着大卷曲八字胡，身体已然发福，罩着短袖白T恤，下面是件蓝裤子，双手僵硬地扣在身前，他打量着尸首，却无半点笑容。
Velupillai Prabhakaran always said this was the moment, four years into the war in September 1987, when he gave up any faith in non-violence. The young man before him, Thileepan, had fasted to death to highlight the plight of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority and their demands for independence. The Sinhalese majority had paid no attention. So Prabhakaran pledged himself and his Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam to a path of unremitting carnage.
韦卢皮莱·普拉巴卡兰常说，这正是他放弃非暴力信仰的时刻。那是1987年9月，战火纷纭已逾四年。横尸普氏面前的男子名叫Thileepan，为引起外界关注斯里兰卡少数民族泰米尔人的困境，表明他们要求独立自治的决心，此人绝食而死。占国内人口多数的僧伽罗人却不为所动。因而普氏发誓，他以及他的泰米尔伊拉姆猛虎解放组织（LTTE，下称“猛虎”）日后定将大开杀戒，踏上漫漫血洗路。
The world had to notice when, in 1996, a truckload of explosives was driven through the gates of the Central Bank in Colombo, killing 90 and injuring more than 1,000. And it had to wake up to Tamil demands when, in 1991 (though Prabhakaran always ducked away from blame for it), India’s former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was blown up by a female bomber who had bent to touch his feet. By the time Prabhakaran was felled by a bullet in his last redoubt, his war had claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Sri Lankans.
1996年，一辆满载炸药的卡车途经科伦坡的中央银行大门时发生爆炸，九十人毙命，千余人受伤。“猛虎”终于引发了国际关注。1991年，印度前总理拉吉夫·甘地在接受一名女子弯腰触脚的礼遇时被其袭击炸死（尽管普氏总是拒绝为此负责）。国际社会终于意识到泰米尔人的权利要求。等到普氏在他最后的藏身之所被一颗神奇的子弹击中时，他的这场战争早已掳去十万斯里兰卡人的身家性命。
And in fact his commitment to violence had been there from the beginning. On his first operation, bunking off school at 17 with his mates, he threw a bomb into a group of soldiers. His first “political” act, in 1975, was to shoot the mayor of Jaffna at point-blank range for betraying the Tamil cause, as he believed. After the founding of the LTTE, in 1976, leaders of rival groups and Tamils too moderate to agree with him were sought out and killed; he signed their death warrants. In person he was stocky, soft-spoken and with a pleasant smile, like a middle-order restaurant manager. But his wife, who first caught his eye by throwing a bucket of coloured water over him at the holi festival, burst into terrified tears when she had done it. And the girls he “cared for” at his special school in Vanni, his embryonic Tamil homeland in the north-east of the island, were trained to strap explosive belts underneath their dresses, a branch of warfare he had more or less invented.
事实上，普氏皈依暴力的许诺由来已久。十七岁时，他策划了首次军事行动。在与伙伴逃学的途中，他朝一群兵丁扔了颗炸弹。他的“政治”处女作完成于1975年，当时普氏近距离射杀了贾夫纳市市长，因他相信此人已经背叛泰米尔人（解放）事业。1976年创建“猛虎”后，敌对阵营及泰米尔族的若干领导人因太过温和未能与普氏达成一致即遭逐一击杀。他签发了斩首令。普氏此人身板敦实，言语温软，笑容可掬，很像一名过着中产生活的饭店经理。不过，在“胡里节”（holi）期间，某女朝他泼去一桶染色水后曾被其吓得痛哭流涕（掷桶之举引起普氏注目，二人嗣后喜结连理）。普氏酝酿的泰米尔人之乡Vanni坐落在岛屿东北方，建有训练专校。那些受他“呵护”的女孩于此处学习身藏炸弹的技巧。也可说这样的刺杀别动队或多或少乃是他的发明。
He was a shy, coddled child, the son of a land officer. His parents, both pious Hindus, were followers of Mahatma Gandhi and his doctrine of ahimsa, or non-violence. But the books young Prabhakaran read, out on the veranda under the banana tree, were biographies of Alexander the Great and Napoleon. He treasured the Bhagavad Gita not for its spiritual riches but for the passage where Krishna told Arjuna that it was his duty to fight and kill even his relations. His great hero, “a beacon to me”, was not Gandhi but Subhas Chandra Bose, who had tried to drive the British out of India with armed force.
这名深受溺爱的国土管理官员之子儿时曾颇为腼腆。双亲可谓虔诚的印度教教徒，亦是圣雄甘地（Mahatma Gandhi）及其非暴力教义（ahimsa）的追随者。但在香蕉树下的走廊上，年轻的普拉巴卡兰所读之书却是亚历山大大帝与拿破仑的传记。他之所以珍爱《薄伽梵歌》（Bhagavad Gita）并非为了这印度史诗的精神财富，而是单恋奎师那（Krishna）向阿朱那（Arjuna）一表心志的那章———奎师那说，抵抗甚至弑亲，他都责无旁贷。普氏心中的大英雄———“我的灯塔”———并非甘地其人，乃是试图将英帝国武力驱逐出印度的苏巴斯·钱德拉·鲍斯（Subhas Chandra Bose）。
In night classes at the Aladi School he reinforced his outrage that Tamils were passed over for civil-service jobs and university places, and were sometimes beaten up in the streets. He practised martial arts, saved money for a revolver, and in 1972 slipped away into the jungle, where he lived for much of the rest of his life.
在Aladi学校温习夜校课程期间，普氏的愤恨渐趋高涨。他想到泰米尔人无缘就任政府文职亦无法去高校谋生，且常要被人按在街头暴打，不平之气便如火上浇油一般。他操练武术，为买一只左轮枪而节衣缩食。1972年，他悄然溜进那块丛林，将自己余生中的大半光阴浑然洒在那儿了。
Curry and Clint Eastwood
咖喱与克林特·伊斯特伍德
As a leader of terrorists he built up an impressive reputation. He waged war for 26 years. At one time, as much as a third of Sri Lanka was under his control. Prabhakaran divided his thousands of Tiger recruits into an army, a navy (with some light boats) and an air force (with flimsy aircraft), and raised money for weapons by extortion, robbery and arm-twisting of the Tamil diaspora. He refused to compromise the cause or make encumbering alliances. When India began to sponsor Tamil groups, he kept clear of them, and when Indian peacekeepers came to Sri Lanka in the 1980s he ended by fighting them.
作为一名恐怖分子头领，普氏树立了赫赫威名。他打了二十六年的战争。曾几何时，斯里兰卡几乎三分之一的土地在他掌控之下。他化整为零，将数千“猛虎”新兵分成海（装配若干轻型舰艇）陆空（带有劣质飞机）三只作战部队，通过绑票、劫掠以及利用海外族人的影响来筹措军费。他拒绝任何可能危及其“光复大业”的妥协，或是那种妨碍性的结盟。当印度开始资助泰米尔反政府武装时，他奉行的是不接触策略；当印度的维和部队在八十年代进驻斯里兰卡时，他则以枪林弹雨回敬之。
No philosophy or ideology guided him, as far as anyone could tell. He did not like abstractions. Nor could he tolerate debate. Despite a peace agreement in 2002 a separate Tamil homeland, with its enemies eliminated, was all he would accept. In Vanni he more or less constructed one, neat and organised as he always was, with thatched huts and coconut groves along dirt roads. There was no power, but the place had its own banks and law courts. The Sinhalese army fenced it in with barbed wire and bombed it. Among the craters were the remains of lush gardens, and lagoons filled with lilies, that might have made the sort of Tamil paradise Prabhakaran carried in his head.
毋庸置疑，普氏的指南针上没有哲学或意识形态的位置。他憎恶抽象的概念，论辩也为他所不喜。虽然他在2002年签订了一份停火协议，但一块独立的、清空敌对势力的泰米尔人之乡却是他唯一能够接受的条件。在Vanni，普氏搭建起一个基地，鳞次栉比的小茅屋，沿着泥泞小道铺开的是一片茂密的椰树林。乡村布局井然有序，一如素来整洁光鲜的他那样。此地并无电力供应，但有它自己的银行和法院。僧伽罗人的军队用带刺铁丝网将其围个水泄不通，尔后大举轰炸。那些弹坑里面埋着昔日繁茂花园的遗骸，淡水湖上则撒满了百合花，此地原本可以成为普氏心许的泰米尔天堂。
Both the Sri Lankan and Indian governments had arrest warrants out for him. He stayed mostly underground where, like some large grub, he was oiled twice a day by his bodyguards and fed on curry and Clint Eastwood movies, in which cops and cowboys shot themselves out of trouble. He had an escape plan, or several. His cadres would kill him, and burn the body; he would squeeze himself into a submarine; he would bite on the cyanide capsule that hung on a black string round his neck.
身为印斯两国政府的通缉要犯，普氏周围布满天罗地网。大部分时间他都蜗居在地下，像条巨大的幼虫。在保镖的陪同下，他每天会有两次户外放风活动。他吃的是咖喱饭菜，看的是克林特·伊斯特伍德主演的电影———剧中的警察和牛仔兵兵乓乓地乱射一气，以求脱困之计。他的潜逃计划也许不止一条。手下的骨干或会杀了他再焚尸；他可能会将自己硬塞入某艘潜水艇；他还可能咬破那颗氰化钾胶囊（系在脖子的黑绳上）。
His people, confined in the end to a beach in north-eastern Sri Lanka and shelled by the Sinhalese army, could not get away so easily from the mayhem Prabhakaran had drawn them into.
在斯里兰卡东北角的海滩上，他的子民已被僧伽罗人的炮火重重围困。这些人，绝难轻易摆脱普拉巴卡兰为他们刻画的炮灰命运。
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（译文的修改要感谢skittos、eastx、插一嘴以及ben_walking诸同学！文责自负。。。）
《经济学人》（The Economist ( http://www.economist.com ))
仅同意本网站翻译其杂志内容，并未对上述翻译内容进行任何审阅查对。
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