惹怒黑手黨的代價：意大利記者的孤獨與艱險

ROME — For many of his days over the past four years, Paolo Borrometi has lived in isolation, though he is barely ever alone. He has not walked through a park or by the beach in his native Sicily for years. He cannot go to a restaurant freely, or to a concert or the movies. He can’t drive a car alone, go shopping alone, or go out for dinner by himself.

羅馬——過去四年里，保羅·博羅梅蒂(Paolo Borrometi)很多時候都生活在孤獨中，盡管很少有獨處的時候。他已經(jīng)很多年沒去過家鄉(xiāng)西西里島的公園或海灘了。他不能隨意去餐廳、聽音樂會或看電影，也不能獨自開車、獨自購物或獨自外出去吃飯。

Before heading to work as a reporter covering the Mafia, he starts each morning with an espresso, a cigarette — and his police escort.

作為一名報道黑手黨的記者，在去上班之前，他的早上是在一杯濃咖啡、一支煙和警方對他的保護中開始的。

Angering the Mafia as a journalist in Italy makes for a lonely life. And yet Borrometi, 35, is in good company. Almost 200 reporters in Italy live under police protection, making it unique among industrialized Western countries, advocacy groups say.

在意大利，惹怒黑手黨會導(dǎo)致記者生活孤獨。但像35歲的博羅梅蒂這樣的情況有不少。倡導(dǎo)組織稱，意大利有近200名記者生活在警察的保護下，這使它在西方工業(yè)化國家中獨具一格。

“None of us wants to be a hero or a model,” Borrometi told an assembly of high school students on a recent morning in Rome, where he now lives. “We just want to do our job and our duty, to tell stories.”

“我們沒人想當(dāng)英雄或榜樣，”最近一個上午，博羅梅蒂在現(xiàn)在生活的羅馬對一群高中生說。“我們只想做自己的工作，盡自己的責(zé)任，就是講故事。”

Yet murders connected to organized crime are rising in Italy, authorities say, and international observers consider criminal networks the principal threat to journalists in Europe.

但當(dāng)局稱，意大利和有組織犯罪有關(guān)的謀殺案件數(shù)量上升。國際觀察人士認為，犯罪網(wǎng)絡(luò)是歐洲記者面臨的主要威脅。

“Don’t stop writing, Paolo,” read an email Borrometi received two days after he was assaulted in 2014 outside his family’s country home in Sicily by two men wearing balaclavas. “Our countries need free and investigative journalism. You have my respect.”

2014年，博羅梅蒂在西西里島上自家的鄉(xiāng)村莊園外被兩名帶面罩的男子襲擊。“不要停止寫作，保羅，”他在兩天后收到的一封電子郵件寫道。“我們的國家需要自由的調(diào)查性新聞報道。我敬重你。”

The note came from Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist who was killed in a car-bomb attack last year, after exposing her island nation’s links to offshore tax havens and reporting on local politicians’ crimes for decades. When she died at 53, she had 47 lawsuits pending against her, including one from the country’s economy minister.

發(fā)件人是馬耳他的調(diào)查記者達夫妮·卡魯阿納·加利齊亞(Daphne Caruana Galizia)。去年，在數(shù)十年里一直堅持揭露島國馬耳他與離岸避稅港的關(guān)系、報道該國政界人物罪行的卡魯阿納·加利齊亞，在一場汽車炸彈襲擊中喪生，終年53歲。她去世時，仍有47樁以她為被告的案件未結(jié)案，其中包括該國經(jīng)濟部長提起的一樁訴訟。

In addition to Caruana Galizia, who was killed in October, a 27-year-old reporter, Jan Kuciak, was killed along with his fiancee in Slovakia in February. He had also been investigating corruption with suspected ties to Italian mobsters.

除了去年10月遇害的卡魯阿納·加利齊亞外，今年2月，27歲的記者揚·庫恰克(Jan Kuciak)和未婚妻在斯洛伐克被殺。他也在調(diào)查疑似與意大利黑幫分子有關(guān)的腐敗行為。

“There have already been two journalists killed by the Mafia inside the European Union, both investigating Mafia stories and stories that domestic governments were not looking into,” said Pauline Adès-Mével, who is responsible for the European desk at Reporters Without Borders, an advocacy group for press freedom.

“歐盟境內(nèi)已有兩名記者被黑手黨殺害，兩人生前都在調(diào)查黑手黨以及國內(nèi)政府沒有在調(diào)查的故事，”新聞自由倡導(dǎo)組織無國界記者(Reporters Without Borders)歐洲編輯部負責(zé)人保利娜·阿德斯-梅韋爾(Pauline Ades-Mevel)說。

“Italy is historically the country that has felt the Mafia the most, and has a dozen of journalists under 24-hour police protection,” Adès-Mével said. “That doesn’t happen in other countries.”

“意大利是歷史上受黑手黨影響最大的國家，有12名記者受警方24小時保護，”阿德斯-梅韋爾。“這種情況不會發(fā)生在其他國家。”

For Borrometi, it took just a year of reporting on the secret businesses and clandestine political ties of the Mafia in southeastern Sicily for his independent news website, La Spia (The Spy), before criminals menaced him. In five years, he got hundreds of death threats from local mobsters.

以博羅梅蒂為例，在自己的獨立新聞網(wǎng)站“間諜”(La Spia)上對黑手黨在西西里島東南部隱秘企業(yè)和政治關(guān)系才進行了一年的報道，他就已經(jīng)受到了犯罪分子的恐嚇。在五年里，他收到當(dāng)?shù)睾趲偷臄?shù)百次死亡威脅。

At first, his articles prompted vandalism against him and late night phone calls. But things got physical after he began writing a series of stories that showed how Sicily’s largest fruit and vegetable market was controlled by mobsters.

起初，文章只是導(dǎo)致他被人詆毀，在深夜遭到電話騷擾。但在他開始寫一系列故事介紹黑幫如何控制西西里島最大的果蔬市場后，攻擊就變成了身體上的。

He was feeding his dog outside his country home, when two men jumped him, grabbed his right arm, and twisted it behind his back until his shoulder muscles tore in three places.

當(dāng)時，他正在自家鄉(xiāng)間住宅外面喂狗。兩名男子開始襲擊他，抓住他右胳膊扭到背后，直到他的肩部肌肉三處撕裂。

“The only words the attackers told me that day were, ‘Mind your own business,’ or ‘This is only the first warning,’ or a Sicilian, less polite, version of it,” Borrometi recalled.

“兇手那天和我說的唯一一句話是，‘管好你自己的事’，或者是‘這只是第一次警告’，或是這句話不那么禮貌的西西里語版本，”博羅梅蒂回憶說。

Almost five years later, he still can’t move his shoulder properly.

快五年過去了，他的肩膀還是無法自如活動。

That didn’t stop him from continuing to report on the Mafia and taking a number of the Mafiosi who threatened him to court. One night, after a fire attack almost burned down his apartment, police decided to put him under full-time protection.

這并未阻止他繼續(xù)對黑手黨進行報道，他還把一些曾經(jīng)威脅過他的黑手黨人告上法庭。一天晚上，他的公寓幾乎要被一場火攻燒毀，之后警方?jīng)Q定對他進行全天保護。

The Mafia wasn’t cowed.

黑手黨并沒有退縮。

“We’ll cut your head off, even inside a police station,” the local Mafia boss said in a public post on social media.

“哪怕是在警察局里，我們都會砍下你的腦袋，”當(dāng)?shù)氐暮谑贮h老大在社交媒體上公開表示。

His reporting — and police investigations — have by now exposed a wider network of Mafia affiliates who move produce from the fruit and vegetable market in Vittoria, Sicily, to the rest of Italy and Europe, in affiliation with other criminal groups.

現(xiàn)在，他的報道——以及警方的調(diào)查——已經(jīng)曝光了更廣泛的黑手黨分支網(wǎng)絡(luò)，他們與與其他犯罪集團聯(lián)系，將西西里的維多利亞蔬果市場的農(nóng)產(chǎn)品轉(zhuǎn)到意大利和歐洲各地出售。

He found out that one of the companies growing the famed Pachino tomato, a special cherry tomato certified by Italy’s Agriculture Ministry, was owned by the sons of two prominent mobsters. One of them had spent more than two decades in jail for Mafia ties, and was now working for his son’s company.

著名的帕奇諾番茄是一種得到意大利農(nóng)業(yè)部認證的特殊櫻桃番茄，博羅梅蒂發(fā)現(xiàn)，有一家種植這種番茄的公司屬于兩名黑幫暴徒要人的兒子們所有。其中一名要人因為同黑手黨的關(guān)系，在監(jiān)獄里蹲了20多年，現(xiàn)在正為兒子的公司工作。

The news spread, and the ministry took notice and cut the company off from the list of businesses that can sell Pachino tomatoes. Not only did the mobsters feel under attack by a reporter, they were out millions of euros in lost revenue.

消息傳開后引起了農(nóng)業(yè)部的注意，將該公司從可銷售帕奇諾番茄的企業(yè)名單上刪除。黑手黨成員不僅感覺自己受了一名記者的攻擊，還損失了數(shù)百萬歐元的收入。

Last month, the mobsters decided to scale up their threats. Police say they intercepted a Sicilian mobster while he was discussing a plot with his sons to kill Borrometi with a car bomb.

上個月，暴徒們決定擴大威脅。警方稱，他們竊聽了一名西西里暴徒與成員們的對話，他們正在商量用汽車炸彈殺害博羅梅蒂。

“We need a ‘firework’ like those in the 1990s, when one couldn’t even walk on the streets,” said the man, who was caught on a police wiretap. “A death every once in a while is useful, so that all the whippersnappers calm down a little.”

“我們需要1990年代的那種‘煙火’，那時候人們根本沒法走上街，”那名被警方監(jiān)聽電話的男子說。“時不時死個人是有好處的，這樣所有狂妄的家伙都能安靜一點。”

The reference was to the tense years when two Palermo prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, were brutally murdered alongside their bodyguards, and car bombs exploded around Italy, killing bystanders and damaging historic buildings.

他們指的是兩名巴勒莫檢察官喬瓦尼·法爾科恩(Giovanni Falcone)和保羅·博爾塞利諾(Paolo Borsellino)與身旁的警衛(wèi)一同被殘忍謀殺的那段緊張時期，當(dāng)時意大利到處都有汽車炸彈爆炸，殺死路人，毀壞歷史建筑。

In the wiretapped conversation, the man was advocating for a return to that bloody time of overt intimidation of authorities and citizens alike. There hasn’t been a Mafia car bomb in Italy since then.

在這段被監(jiān)聽的談話中，該男子主張重回政府和平民受公開恐嚇的血腥時代。自那個時期之后，意大利一直沒有出現(xiàn)過黑手黨汽車炸彈事件。

“This shows how much investigative journalism angers the Mafia, which thrives with its business in silence,” Nino Di Matteo — a prominent Mafia prosecutor, hence also a prime target — said on national television a few days after police arrested those said to be planning the attack against Borrometi.

警方逮捕了那些據(jù)稱正計劃對博羅梅蒂發(fā)起襲擊的人們，幾天后，著名黑手黨檢察官——因此也成了他們的頭號目標——尼諾·迪·馬迪歐(Nino Di Matteo)在全國電視上說：“這證明了這些秘密發(fā)展生意的黑手黨被調(diào)查新聞激怒到了什么地步。”

“Journalism has a fundamental role in the fight against the Mafia, especially in a moment like this,” said Di Matteo, who also travels with bodyguards. “I believe we are underestimating a bit of the danger that the Mafia represents to the country and to our democracy.”

“新聞報道在反對黑手黨的斗爭中發(fā)揮了重要作用，特別是在這樣的時刻，”身邊同樣有保鏢時刻陪同的迪·馬迪歐說。“我認為我們有點低估了黑手黨對我們的國家和民主的危害。”