なすびです。
2/27（日）に起こったことなので、ご存じの方もおられるかもしれません。
ドイツのダルムシュタット（フランクフルトの南側）にある米軍基地で、基地に住
む３人の子供（14-18歳）が、橋の上からアウトバーン（高速道）に投石し、その直
撃により車を運転していた２人が死亡、５人が怪我という「事件」がありました。亡
くなった二人は20歳と41歳のいずれも女性です。
新聞によれば、この米軍基地はかなり大きな複合施設で、フランクフルトからハイ
デルベルグを結ぶアウトバーンを挟んで広がっており、敷地を結ぶ橋があります。そ
の橋には７フィート（約２メートル10センチ）の高さの壁がありましたが、子供たち
はサッカーボールほどの大きさもある石を、この壁を越して投げおろしていたとのこ
とです。
子供たちは、数週間前からこの「遊び」をしており、2/27の夜に最初の「直撃」が
あった後も石を投げ続け、計７人の死傷事故となったとのことです。
被害者のその後の様子や、それに対する米軍の対応などについては、よく分かりま
せん。子供の身柄は基地内の警察にありますが、ドイツ国内の法律だったなら最高10
年の少年院生活に相当する罪だそうです。
アメリカのメディアは、それよりも、この「事件」を「基地生活におけるひずみの
現れ」と見なして問題視しています。
親とともに遠く離れた地に来ているだけでなく、基地間での移動も多く、またPKO
などで父親が出兵すれば２カ月以上も母親と二人だけであることなどが、記事では指
摘されています。軍関係者は、これほど米国内と同じような生活形態を実現している
のにと言っているようですが、そもそもこのような人工的なコミュニティがおかしい
のだと指摘している人もいます。
基地の内部の者にも外部の者にも迷惑なのだから、一刻も早く撤去していただきた
い。
以下、ワシントン・ポストでのこの「事件」を伝える記事と、基地生活のひずみを
指摘する記事を転載します。
英文を見ただけでうんざりという方もおられると思いますが、全文訳まではめんど
くさいのでお許しください。
-------------------------------------------------------
U.S. Teens Accused of Murder
Stones Dropped Off a Bridge Kill Two German Motorists
By Carol Williams
Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, March 1, 2000; Page A11
【BERLIN, Feb. 29】A German prosecutor announced today that he is seeking
murder charges against three U.S. teenagers after they reportedly confessed
to hurling large rocks from a highway overpass in a dangerous game
that
killed two drivers and injured five passengers.
In a troubling incident that could undermine relations
between American
troops and their German hosts, the youths--all children of U.S. Army
soldiers--told police investigators in Darmstadt that they had been
lobbing
stones as big as soccer balls from the pedestrian bridge for weeks
before
the deadly strikes Sunday night.
Falling stones hit at least four cars on the busy stretch
of the autobahn
connecting Frankfurt and Heidelberg, Darmstadt police spokesman Heiner
Jerofsky told reporters. One rock the size of a small loaf of bread
smashed
through the windshield of a compact car driven by a 20-year-old Darmstadt
woman, killing her and critically injuring her 75-year-old grandmother.
A
41-year-old mother of two small children also was killed.
Four U.S. students were arrested Monday night, but one,
a 15-year-old,
was released once interrogators learned that he had left the overpass
before
the rock throwing began.
The other three, ages 14, 17 and 18, were taken to a juvenile
detention
facility pending court approval of murder and attempted murder charges,
a
move that was expected within 24 hours, Darmstadt chief prosecutor
Georg
Balss said at a news conference.
If convicted under Germany's juvenile justice laws, the
teens could be
sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in a German youth facility.
German courts have jurisdiction over the dependents of
U.S. troops posted
in Germany, and all three will be tried according to German law, Balss
said.
But he added that it had not been decided whether to try the 18-year-old
as
an adult or a juvenile.
The footbridge over the highway connects the U.S. Army's
Lincoln housing
complex with the grounds of an American school that the youths attend
in
Darmstadt, just south of Frankfurt. The narrow overpass is flanked
by
7-foot-high walls of reinforced plastic for safety, but the teens apparently
managed to lob the heavy stones over the barriers and could presumably
hear
the shattering windshields and collisions that resulted, said Gottfried
Stoermer, head of a special investigative commission.
"From what we know, they were quite sure of having scored
a hit and yet
they continued," he told reporters in Darmstadt.
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen extended condolences
to the families
of the victims and assured German authorities that the U.S. military
police
in the region will provide all needed assistance.
---
Rock-Throwing Deaths Shake U.S. Military Base in Germany
By Charles Trueheart
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 5, 2000; Page A24
【DARMSTADT, Germany, March 4】The footbridge over the highway is a
bleak
and lonely place. Lined with eight-foot-high clear plastic barriers
spattered with graffiti, the walkway leads from a U.S. military housing
complex called Lincoln Village to a forest, fields and the village
of
Heimstatten.
Last Sunday night, three American teenagers, sons of soldiers
posted to
the U.S. Army's sprawling installation here, came to the footbridge
and
began heaving 20-pound rocks onto passing traffic.
One football-size rock smashed through the windshield
of a passing BMW,
instantly killing a 20-year-old German woman and critically injuring
her
75-year-old grandmother. The car hit a guardrail and skidded to a rest
down
the highway. But the three teenagers kept at their deadly game, police
say.
A few minutes later, another boulder smashed into a Mercedes-Benz passing
in
the opposite direction. The German driver, a 41-year-old mother of
two, was
killed instantly.
By Monday night, U.S. and German investigators had identified
and
detained three youths, ages 18, 17 and 14, who reportedly confessed.
Prosecutors in Darmstadt said they plan to charge the three with homicide
and attempted homicide, offenses that carry possible 10-year terms
in a
German youth detention facility.
The deaths and charges have provoked a wave of guilt and
bewilderment in
this community of 7,000 Americans, many of whom wonder how such a tragedy
could occur despite the extensive support systems designed for the
families
of U.S. service personnel. The tragedy also highlighted the peculiar
self-imposed isolation in which American military personnel stationed
here
and elsewhere abroad often live.
"This casts a cloud over all of us, over anyone wearing
a uniform and
their families," Army chaplain Maj. Frank O'Grady told a handful of
people
who came to his chapel Friday to pray for the victims, the youths and
their
families.
The Darmstadt Military Community, as the collection of
Pentagon real
estate is called, is a cocoon of transplanted Americana. There's a
food
court with a Burger King and a Taco Bell where only U.S. dollars are
accepted. Bulletin boards are cluttered with notices for every kind
of
activity--horseback riding, softball, excursions to Germany and Europe.
A
production of "West Side Story" is opening soon.
The community also has its own movie theater and bowling
alley--where
German prosecutors say the three teenagers concocted their plan Sunday
evening, ratcheting up a "tradition" of tossing pebbles over the barriers
onto the highway.
The next evening this quiet, safe environment was shattered
by the sound
of German police vehicles cruising the streets, loudly broadcasting
requests
for help in identifying the culprits. But the messages were in German,
which
many Americans here don't understand.
The next day was worse. German reporters and cameramen,
the residents
say, chased children down the streets of Lincoln Village, the run-down
apartment complex where many Army families live, as the story of the
rock-throwing spread.
"Germany's most cowardly murderers--catch them! An act
of insanity and
madness," read the most sensational headlines in the daily Bild newspaper.
The paper quoted a German university professor, Ronald Eckert, who
said,
"The kids knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to hurt people,
gloat over their suffering. They did not think of the consequences."
Americans interviewed for this article said they had experienced
no
hostility from Germans they have encountered in the wake of the tragedy,
and
they rejected the suggestion that the killings were motivated by any
anti-German sentiment. O'Grady pointed out in his homily that the victims
on
the highway, which carries a lot of traffic in and out of the base,
could
almost as easily have been "you or I."
Still, tensions are running high. Linda Hillard, who lives
with her
husband and teenagers off-base in a German village, said: "I told my
kids
they couldn't go to the pool in the village, that they couldn't go
downtown
alone. I don't want my kids subjected to any insults because of their
nationality."
The soul-searching has been especially acute here because
the support
systems provided for families are so comprehensive.
"Military life is unique," said Connie Willis, a veteran
youth services
team leader for the Darmstadt Military Community. "With the military
stretched all over the world, there's an issue with a mother or father
being
away."
U.S. Army personnel stationed in Darmstadt--most of them
involved in what
the military calls "signals," or communications--are routinely deployed
elsewhere for six or seven weeks, notably nowadays to peacekeeping
operations in the Balkans. The high proportion of single-parent families
in
the modern U.S. military makes the pressures all the more intense.
"This makes our programs so important," said Willis. "Before-school
programs, after-school programs, evening programs, winter programs,
summer
programs." Could any program have prevented this tragedy? "There's
not a
thing I could have done. I could have put shackles on them."
The names of the teenagers accused of throwing the rocks
have not been
released by German authorities, and base officials refused to supply
details
about them or their families.
But their identities are widely known on the close-knit
base, and many
people say they were bewildered because the three youths were not notorious
troublemakers.
When the base's civilian youth services director, Jon
Ridgel, heard about
the highway deaths and rumors that American youths were involved, he
ticked
off a list of 10 likely suspects to his wife. When he found out the
next day
who they were, he said, "it was none of them."
Hillard, a friend of one of the suspect's families, also
said she would
never have predicted this. "It's a caring, decent, normal family. You
see
the parents at sports events. . . . I could only say, 'There but for
the
grace of God go I.' "
Thomas Starratt, principal of Darmstadt Middle School,
concluded ruefully
that "if this could happen here, with all the support we give our kids,
then
it could happen anywhere."
But Mary Edwards Wertsch, author of "Military Brats: Legacies
of
Childhood Inside the Fortress," who grew up as a military brat, said
trouble
can brew on bases because they are "artificial communities."
"They're unreal in the sense that in a rooted civilian
community there
are elders and traditions and community involvement," said Wertsch.
"Civic
dialogue that happens in a rooted community can't take place on a military
base. It's not a democracy."
Despite occasional feelings of loneliness or powerlessness,
many parents
here say moving from place to place in the military broadens their
children's perspective. "I wouldn't trade it," Hillard said. "It builds
character, although saying goodbye and moving on never gets easy."
Wertsch, however, noted that the code of military discipline
on a base,
and what she calls the "warrior culture," can be especially overpowering
to
the sons of soldiers.
"There's a lot of daring of one another that takes place
in the sons'
subculture on a base," she said. "It's reinforced by the military
environment, where there's only one model of manhood, and it's a warrior
model. A boy is not given any other alternatives."
As for what happened last Sunday night, Wertsch said:
"What happens to
any group of people who live in isolation from the world around them?
They
objectify those on the outside. They stop thinking of them as humans."
No theory is satisfying, and all come back to the question
Hillard is
still asking: "What the hell were they thinking?"
Research assistant Nuschin Kianzad in Berlincontributed to this report.
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