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1、精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上We all know how ships are born, how majestic vessels are nudged into the ocean with a bottle of champagne. But few of us know how they die. And hundreds of ships meet their death every year. From five-star ocean liners, to grubby freighters, literally dumped with all their steel, their
2、asbestos, their toxins on the beaches of some the poorest countries in the world, countries like Bangladesh. You cant really believe how bad it is here, until you see it. It could be as close as youll get to hell on earth, with the smoke, the fumes, and the heat. The men who labor here are the wretc
3、hed of the earth, doing dirty, dangerous work, for little more than $1 a day. Its not much of a final resting place, this desolate beach near the city of Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal. Ships are lined up here as at any port, but theyll never leave. Instead, they will be dissected, bolt by bolt, ri
4、vet by rivet, every piece of metal destined for the furnaces to be melted down and fashioned into steel rods. The ships dont die easily - they are built to float, not to be ripped apart, spilling toxins, oil and sludge into the surrounding seas.The men who work here are dwarfed by the ships they are
5、 destroying. And they dissect the ships by hand. The most sophisticated technology on the beach is a blowtorch. The men carry metal plates, each weighing more than a ton from the shoreline to waiting trucks, walking in step like pallbearers, or like members of a chain gang. They paint images of wher
6、e they would like to be on the trucks - pictures of paradise far from this wasteland.And when night falls, the work continues and the beach becomes an inferno of smoke and flames and filth.This industry, which employs thousands and supplies Bangladesh with almost all its steel, began with an acciden
7、t - a cyclone to be precise. In 1965, a violent storm left a giant cargo ship beached on what was then a pristine coastline. It didnt take long before people began ripping the ship apart. They took everything and businessmen took note - perhaps they didnt need a storm to bring ships onto this beach
8、here.Mohammed Mohsins family has become extremely wealthy bringing ships onto these beaches. He pays millions of dollars for each ship and makes his profit from the steel he sells. The name of his company is PHP, which stands for Peace, Happiness and Prosperity. His latest acquisition is a ship weig
9、hing in at 4,000 tons but Mohsin tells Simon thats small by comparison to other vessels that have been gutted on the beaches. They have handled ships as large as 68,000 tons.This the first time Mohsin has seen the 4,000 ton ship close up. In fact buying a ship is not at all like buying a car. He did
10、nt even need to see a picture before he bought it for $14 million. All he needed to know was its weight and how much the owners were charging for each ton of steel. One of the single most valuable parts of the ship is the propeller. The small ships propeller is worth around $35,000 alone, Mohsin est
11、imates.It may be a small ship to Mohsin, but getting onto it from the beach is still a bit delicate.Mohsins ships dont have seafaring captains anymore - he is the captain now of dying ships and the captain of one of the largest of 30 shipyards on this 10-mile stretch of beach. Some 100 ships are rip
12、ped apart on the beach each year, most of them from the west.It is the wests garbage dump, says Roland Buerk, who lives in Bangladesh. He spent a year in these yards, writing a book about the industry. 60 Minutes hired him to guide Simon through the tangled world of shipbreaking.To do the same work
13、in America or England would be very expensive.It would be because in Europe and America when they do this, they do it in dry docks, Buerk explains. So in actual fact, the owners of these ships are selling them to the yard owners here to break up. If they had to do it in America, theyd have to pay fo
14、r that process to be carried out. So you see it makes real economic sense to do it here.So old, out-dated ships that were previously a liability, are now an asset, Simon remarks.Exactly, Buerk agrees. And thats why they end up on these shores.They are the shores of the most densely populated nation
15、and one of the poorest nations in the world. Bangladesh desperately needs steel for construction but has no iron ore mines. The shipbreaking yards are its mines, providing 80 percent of the nations steel.But steel is only part of the deal; there are so many things on a ship which are sold off. It is
16、 in fact a gigantic recycling operation.You can find everything, including kitchen sinks, at a sprawling roadside market which goes on for miles. When youre driving down this road, its not a problem if you need a toilet or a life boat or a light bulb. It is estimated that 97 percent of the ships con
17、tents are recycled. The other three percent, the stuff nobody would buy, including the hazardous waste, asbestos, arsenic and mercury, are left behind to foul the beaches.And what were looking at, which is a recycling operation, is also an environmental disaster, Simon says.Thats true. And I think t
18、his is really capitalism as red in tooth and claw as it gets. At the moment this is what makes financial sense for everybody. And this is, despite the fact that we might not like it, and it doesnt look pretty, this is how its done, Buerk says.The workers toil in tough conditions. They have no unions
19、, no safety equipment, and no training. About 50 are said to die in accidents each year; often in explosions set off by blowtorches deep inside the fume-filled holds. You see casualties in the yards, men who were injured here but have no money to go anywhere else. The workers are housed in barracks
20、with no beds, just steel plates scavenged from the ships they break. Many of the workers are not old enough to grow a beard. Some are, quite simply, children. 60 Minutes spoke to several who said they were 14 and had been working here for two years.So what does the man from Peace Happiness and Prosp
21、erity say about that?Asked if there are any children working in his yard, Mohsin says, Not my yard.Well, we talked to several children, Simon tells Mohsin. We found a couple who were 14 and said theyd been working there for a couple of years.They are - if they are working - if they dont work, what t
22、heyll do, then? Our government cannot afford it. Their food, shelter and clothing has to be provided by someone whether their parents or the government. None of them can afford it. So what they gonna do? Mohsin argues.So, you say that child labor is inevitable, necessary in Bangladesh? Simon asks.If
23、 they dont work in ship-breaking yard, theyll work somewhere else. They have to, Mohsin replies.But child labor is only one of the issues. Environmentalists have been doing battle with the industry for years. They say the west has no business dumping its toxic waste on impoverished lands in the east
24、. They condemn the appalling work conditions, the low pay, and the lack of accountability for workers who are killed or injured. Their most important proposal: that ships be cleaned of their toxic materials in the west, before they sail to Bangladesh.Thats in line with an international ban which pro
25、hibits the shipment of hazardous waste from rich countries to poorer countries.Rezwana Hasan of the Bangladeshi Environmental Lawyers Association is in the forefront of the battle against the industry. She says the shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh dont respect even the most minimal environmental sta
26、ndards.And an industry that cant comply with these minimum standards must not operate, she argues. I mean if you cant comply with the - if you cant pay your worker the minimum wage, you cant operate. You cant - if you cant ensure the minimum environmental safeguard you shouldnt operate.But the owner
27、s of the yards argue that environmentalism is a luxury, reserved for the rich nations.It becomes quite expensive, which we cant afford, Mohsin claims.If all the rules and regulations, all the international conventions regarding ship breaking were observed here, would the industry be able to survive?
28、 Simon asks Mohsin,No, he replies. It would be stopped from tomorrow. Itll stop. Has to be stopped.And that, he says, would put 30,000 men out of work and deprive Bangladesh of its source of steel.But for now the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh is sailing full steam ahead. Literally. 60 Minutes
29、boarded a Russian fishing trawler, the Bata, in the final hours of its last voyage. It was eerie walking through the corridors. The lights were on but nobody was home. It was a dead ship sailing.In a sailors cabin, the sheets were on the bed, a radio and a flashlight were on the table. In the kitche
30、n, there were pots filled with borscht and potatoes that were barely cold.In the dining room there were still Russian books on a table. They too will end up in the market on that dusty road to Chittagong. There was just a skeleton crew on this skeleton shipUp on the bridge, Captain Edwaard Petenko a
31、lready seemed dressed up for his coming vacation. He had brought the ship all the way from Vladivostok and didnt enjoy the trip.Asked what it feels like taking the ship to the beach, Petenko tells Simon, No like.No like. Sometimes even cry. Because Capt. Petenko says.He wasnt even in charge any more
32、. The baton had passed to the beaching captain, Enam Chowdrey. He had done this 700 times. They call him the executioner.Beaching a ship is a very delicate operation. Its not simply aiming for the beach - Chowdrey has to calculate the movement of the tides, the swell, the wind, by the minute. In thi
33、s instance, he has got to wedge the ship between two other vessels already parked there. The workers on ships nearby are cheering. The Batas arrival means more work, more wages for them. Their backs and their lungs will suffer, but do they have a choice?The Bata steamed its way into its final restin
34、g place. The bow got stuck in the sand. A perfect end to the last voyage. In just a few months, it will disappear.And Captain Petenko? Hell head home to Vladivostock. But hell be back in Bangladesh soon. His company has three more trawlers heading to these shipyards.U.S. Naval and Merchant Marine ships no longer wind up in these yards, not since 1998, when President Clinton passed a moratorium on exporting U.S. ships. Instead, they clog up American waterways. U.S. ship breakers cant keep pace and the Bangladeshis would be only to happy to have their business.专心-专注-专业