VOA标准英语2012--Wounded Syrians Treated at Secret Clinic in Lebanon

Wounded Syrians Treated at Secret Clinic in Lebanon

Amran, 6, is one of the youngest patients in this hospital. He has difficulty walking. When he shows his leg, it’s easy to see why. A chunk¹ is missing from his shin. The hole is surrounded by red scar tissue.
"I’m here because they shot me,” Amran said. He was fleeing Syria with his mother when security forces opened fire. His mother survived unscathed. Amran will be disabled for life.
There are many other injured Syrian children at this private Tripoli clinic. The doctors asked us not to identify its whereabouts.
Patients hide their faces. Many are wounded anti-government protesters. They say if they were identified, their families in Syria would be tortured and killed.
With his laptop permanently² connected to Facebook, Skype and YouTube, one army defector is keeping up his fight from his hospital bed via the Internet - distributing videos from inside Syria.
He gave us footage of a protest and funeral in Homs. With pride, he says he is the man in white on the shoulders of a friend - in Arabic, the ‘Kashoosh,’ the one who leads the chanting.
“I’m lucky to have a strong voice, and I’m also musical,” he said. “I used to put all my heart into it, and I used to be the one who used to chant, ‘The people want to downfall of the regime, the people want the regime to go.’''
His luck ran out four months ago - he was shot at a protest. The man on the bed next to him saved his life and took him on the highly dangerous route to Lebanon.
“Yes, this is a dangerous thing to do,” he said. “When we joined these protests we said we would either survive or die, that was our motto. I was part of Assad’s army. I defected because of what it did. This army is cruel, they go into people’s homes, it doesn’t matter if it is a child or an old person, the army would kill them.”
In the neighboring room, more wounded protesters. One shows us the bone fragments removed from his leg after he was shot.
“This is not sectarian. It’s Assad himself who wants there to be a civil war. He would use that against us,” said the protester. “He’s used everything else - warplanes, artillery³. He’s done horrific things. You should see Baba Amr in Homs where I come from, you would cry if you saw how people are surviving.”
The patients here say they can’t get treatment in Syria because security forces regularly raid hospitals to arrest protesters. They say they are lucky to get treatment in Lebanon.
For the children in this clinic, luck and fortune have been brutally⁴ stolen away, by a conflict that does not discriminate⁵ by age.

1 chunk   

n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量）

参考例句：

• They had to be careful of floating chunks of ice.他们必须当心大块浮冰。
• The company owns a chunk of farmland near Gatwick Airport.该公司拥有盖特威克机场周边的大片农田。

2 permanently   

adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地

参考例句：

• The accident left him permanently scarred.那次事故给他留下了永久的伤疤。
• The ship is now permanently moored on the Thames in London.该船现在永久地停泊在伦敦泰晤士河边。

3 artillery   

n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队)

参考例句：

• This is a heavy artillery piece.这是一门重炮。
• The artillery has more firepower than the infantry.炮兵火力比步兵大。

4 brutally   

adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地

参考例句：

• The uprising was brutally put down.起义被残酷地镇压下去了。
• A pro-democracy uprising was brutally suppressed.一场争取民主的起义被残酷镇压了。

5 discriminate   

v.区别，辨别，区分；有区别地对待

参考例句：

• You must learn to discriminate between facts and opinions.你必须学会把事实和看法区分出来。
• They can discriminate hundreds of colours.他们能分辨上百种颜色。