Some experiences of suffering – 1984 to 1999 1984

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  1984: Indira Gandhi four times Prime Minister of India is assassinated.
  
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  1984: Police Officer Yvonne Fletcher gunned down in London while on duty outside the Libyan Embassy
  
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  1984: I.R.A. bomb blast at the Grand Hotel Brighton kills 5 and seriously injures 34, including two cabinet ministers
  
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  1984: I.R.A. bomb blast at the Grand Hotel Brighton kills 5 and seriously injures 34, including two cabinet ministers
  
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  1984: Bhopal India – toxic gas leak at insecticide plant kills more than 2100 people; many more permanently affected by inhalation of gas
  
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  1985: Earthquake in Mexico (registering 7.8 on the Richter Scale with an aftershock of 7.3) kills thousands
  
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  1985: Rock Hudson, Hollywood A List star, dies of AIDS, age 59
  
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  1985: Hijacked hostages in Beirut freed after seventeen days
  
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  1985: Live Aid concerts for African famine relief, co-ordinated by Bob Geldorf, take place at the Wembley Stadium in London and in Philadelphia. The line-ups include Bob Dylan, Sting, Queen, Madonna and Mick Jagger.
  
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  1985: Corrupt dictators flee – ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier of Haiti escapes to France
  

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  1986: Chernobyl USSR – nuclear generating plant disaster.
  

60% of the radioactive fallout lands in Belarus

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  1986: Challenger Space Shuttle explodes shortly after take off from Cape Canaveral; seven astronauts killed
  
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  1987: British ferry, The Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes on its way from Zeebrugge, Belgium to Dover, England
  
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  1988: Major American cities facing ‘Crack’ invasion
  
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  1988: Iraq admits using chemical weapons
  
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  1988: Huge earthquake devastates Armenia
  
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  1988: New Arab – Israeli clashes in East Jerusalem at the Dome of the Rock (one of the holiest sites in the city
  
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  1989: Massive earthquake in San Francisco Bay – 270 deaths
  
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  1989: Vast oil spill of more than a million barrels of crude oil from the Exxon Valdez tanker pollutes more than 500 square miles of Alaskan waters and coastline to a depth of one foot on some beaches and causes massive loss of wild life including birds, seals and otters
  
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  1989: The Berlin Wall comes down
  
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  1989: Rumanian Revolution takes place
  
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  1989: Tiananmen Square massacre – Chinese soldiers kill several hundred civilians and students protesting for democratic change
  
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  1990: Nelson Mandela freed after 27 years’ imprisonment, many of which were served on the notorious Robben Island
  
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  1990: East and West Germany reunited after 45 years and becomes The Federal Republic of Germany
  
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  1990: Disaster in Mecca: 1400 pilgrims suffocated, crushed or trampled to death in a tunnel leading from the Ka’aba shrine inside the Great Mosque to nearby Mount Arafat
  
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  1991: Yugoslavia edges closer to civil war
  

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  1992: Serbian death camps in Bosnia shock the world; rumours of brutality, murder and rape confirmed by TV pictures
  
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  1992: Serbian ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Policy denounced by U.S. officials
  
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  1993: Racial tensions erupt - Los Angeles burns after Rodney King verdict
  
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  1993: Huge explosion shakes the 110 floor high Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. Five killed and hundreds affected by smoke inhalation – ‘the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history’*
  

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  1993: White rule in South Africa ends. First all race elections scheduled for April 1994. Frederik de Klerk, the white president who was the architect of the reforms said, ‘the next parliament will remove the albatross of injustice, exclusion and discrimination’. The move is bitterly opposed by white supremacists
  
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  1993: N.A.T.O. involved in the first offensive action in its 45 year history as it launches an air attack over Bosnia. Two Bosnian Serb aircraft shot down having twice ignored warnings to leave the U.N. ‘No Fly Zone’.
  
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  1994: Rwanda’s ‘Killing Fields’ rooted in conflict between the Hutu government and the Tutsi rebels. Makeshift refugee camps overwhelmed by starvation and disease. Drugs, food and clean water are desperately needed. The Red Cross estimates that over 100,000 people have been killed in two weeks of tribal slaughter
  
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  1994: Nelson Mandela sworn in as South Africa’s first black president
  
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  1995: Kobe, Japan experiences its worst earthquake since 1923. The 20 second shock, measuring 7.2 on The Richter Scale, leaves more than 4000 people dead
  
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  1995: In Rwanda Hutus massacred by the Tutsi dominated army at the Kibeho refugee camp
  
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  1995: Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin shot dead after calling for peace. His assailant, 25 year old student Yigal Amir told police, ‘I acted alone on God’s orders and have no regrets’.
  
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  1995: Bosnian peace deal brokered by U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke. Milosevic of Serbia, Tudjman of Croatia and Izetbegovic of Bosnia consented to a formula that ‘ostensibly’ creates a unified Bosnia, but in facts divides the country along racial lines.
  

The agreement is backed up by 60,000 N.A.T.O. Troops – including 20 thousand from the U.S. and 13 thousand from the U.K.

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  1995: Tokyo on alert after poison Serin nerve gas attack in the subway system
  
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  1996: I.R.A. blast in London’s Docklands ends fragile ceasefire and is seen as an attempt to derail the Peace Process
  
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  1996: Pipe bomb at the Atlanta Olympics leaves two dead and more than a hundred injured
  
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  1996: Mid-air disaster over Delhi, India when a Saudi Arabian Boeing 747 collided with an Ilyushin 76. All 312 people on the 747 and 38 people on the Ilyushin died in the world’s third worst ever mid-air collision. The Ilyushin was flying 1000 feet too low.
  
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  1996: Two years on over 500,000 refugees return to their Rwandan homeland, most having fled the bloody ethnic conflict in their country. Hundreds of thousands have no food or basic supplies
  
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  1996: Manchester City Centre devastated by I.R.A. bomb
  
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  1997: 31st August – Death of Princess Diana in Paris
  

Millions of people around the world experienced a sense of loss and many felt directly and deeply affected by her death

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  1997: 5th September - Mother Teresa*, ‘The Saint of the Slums’ dies aged 87 in Calcutta, India having devoted her life to looking after the destitute and the dying
  

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  1998: Northern Ireland peace settlement ‘The Good Friday Accord’ agreed
  
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  1998: Bomb explodes in Omagh, Northern Ireland killing 28 (August)
  
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  1998: Negotiators David Trimble and John Hume receive the Nobel Peace Prize for their part in securing the Accord (October)
  
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  1998: Mass trials begin in Rwanda for the 1994 genocide – 125,000 suspects for the
  

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  1998: Worst floods of the century devastate low-lying Bangladesh. More than 900 people dead. 30 million people left homeless
  
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  1998: Hurricane Georges devastates Florida Keys after killing more than 250 people in the Caribbean
  
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  1998: Hurricane Mitch strikes Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala killing an estimated 5000 people. 600,000, nearly 10% of Honduras’s population, left homeless by the hurricane are forced to flee. The worst hurricane season in the Atlantic for 200 years
  
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  1999: Colombia crushed by earthquake
  
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  1999: Avalanches near Chamonix in the French Alps kill eighteen – worst avalanche season for ninety years