Occupational Therapy Assignment

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Around the World

A new world order emerged in the 1990s. The economic changes the Soviet Union had initiated in the 1980s sig- naled the fall of the Iron Curtain, and breakup and democratization movements swept the countries under its influ- ence. After Hungary removed its border restrictions with Austria in 1989, thousands of East Germans escaped to the West, and mass demonstrations against the East Germany regime began. Official destruction of the Berlin Wall began in November 1989 and was completed less than a year later. In 1990, the economically beleaguered East Germans voted for reunification with West Germany. West Germany voted in a temporary tax to be paid by West German citizens and created investment stimulus packages for private industry in East Germany to make reunification work. However, the West German government quickly discovered that the state of the East German infrastructure was much worse than anticipated, and the economic drain placed on West Germany was almost more than it could bear. By 1994, the temporary tax had been extended twice. Also, because the conditions in the former East Germany had improved very little, there was a mass migration into the former West Germany, causing market shortages, higher unemployment, and housing crunches. This all added up to growing disillusionment with the reunification effort and resentment among both West and East Germans.

Following the Iran–Iraq War that lasted most of the 1980s, Iraq was extremely indebted to several Arab coun- tries, including a $14 billion debt to Kuwait. Iraq hoped to repay its debts by raising the price of oil through Orga- nization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil production cuts. Instead, Kuwait increased production, lowering prices, in an attempt to leverage a better resolution of their border dispute. In addition, Iraq charged that Kuwait had taken advantage of the Iran–Iraq War to drill for oil and build military outposts on Iraqi soil near Kuwait. Iraq also charged that it had performed a collective service for all Arabs by acting as a buffer against Iran and that therefore Kuwait and Saudi Arabia should negotiate or cancel Iraq’s war debts. After Kuwait refused to negotiate, Iraqi forces invaded in 1990. The United Nations Security Council immediately voted to impose economic sanctions on Iraq. However, when Iraqi forces were amassed on the border with Saudi Arabia, U.S. President George H. W. Bush sent forces to the region. Because of popular opposition, the United States did not immediately launch an offensive action. Instead, together with several Arab states that had voted to oppose Iraq with military force, coalition forces began bombing Iraq in January 1991. After nearly 100,000 Iraqis were killed, about 100,000 Iraqi troops surrendered, and the remaining Iraqi forces retreated.

U.S. participation in these actions brought renewed animosity from radical factions in the area, and terrorist attacks on U.S. personnel escalated. A car bomb exploded in an underground parking garage at the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, killing 6 and injuring more than 1,000. In 1996, a truck bomb exploded outside

Historical Context of the 1990s

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U.S. military barracks, killing 19 American soldiers. The following year two U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed. The culprits of these bombings were to gain greater attention on September 11, 2001, with the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon.

The reforms Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had initiated in the mid-1980s had unleashed a democratic movement in almost all of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s two-tiered economic plan of reform and openness threw the Soviet Union into chaos as the different nationalities used their new freedoms to break away. The power of the central government was considerably weakened by these movements and in August 1991, a group of hard-line Communists organized a coup d’etat. They kidnapped Gorbachev and announced he would no longer be able to govern. The country went into an uproar. Massive protests were staged in most of the major cities of the Soviet Union. When the coup organizers tried to bring in the military to quell the protestors, the soldiers them- selves rebelled, saying that they could not fire on their fellow countrymen. After three days of massive protest, the coup organizers surrendered. Gorbachev returned to the presidency but resigned effective the end of the year. By January 1992, by popular demand, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. In its place, a new entity was formed called the Commonwealth of Independent States, composed of most of the independent countries of the former Soviet Union. Each of these countries now has complete political independence, although they maintain economic ties for devel- opment. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it the closing of the Cold War.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought chaos to many countries that had existed under its close influence. Most notably, Yugoslavia, itself a federation of smaller republics, fell apart in June 1991. Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic prevented Croatian leader Stipe Mesic from assuming the presidency, and Croatia and Slovenia seceded. The Yugoslav army moved into both republics. In July they left Slovenia but began ethnic cleansing in Croatia until January 1992, when a U.N.-supervised ceasefire took place. By this time, 25,000 people were dead. Macedonia declared independence in September 1991, although Greece requested that the country find a different name because Greece also had an area named Macedonia. Bosnia and Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia in April 1992.

The 1990s were also a decade of great change in South Africa. After more than 20 years of repressive rule, the White government was facing increasing internal and international pressures for change. Black South Africans had organized into a African National Congress (ANC) and began bringing weapons and guerillas into the country. Campaigns were launched in the United States and Great Britain against companies that did business in South Africa, causing many companies to disinvest and leave. Other foreign companies remained but agreed to abide by a code of conduct in their South African operations (e.g., move to equal pay for non-White people doing the same work as White people; employment and promotions based on ability, not on race). Facing increasing riots, in February 1990 the government released resistance leader Nelson Mandela, who had been held for 27 years in prison on charges of treason, in hopes he could help negotiate a political settlement between the Black and White populations. In March of the following year, South Africa’s White population voted to give President F. W. de Klerk a mandate to end White-minority rule.

Finally, after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed, any substantive fears that some countries had about the possibility of a majority-led South Africa allying itself with the Soviet Union were gone. In 1994, Black people were admitted to the South African ballot booths, the ANC overwhelmingly won the majority of seats in the parliament, and Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Elsewhere on the African continent, President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, who had remained in power for more than 20 years, was facing rebel actions from the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In a move to discredit the rebels, in 1990 Habyarimana began ordering massacres of members of one ethnic group, the Tutsis, while blaming the mas- sacres on another group, the Hutus, who acted against the government. This caused growing mistrust and resent- ment among members of these ethnic groups. By late March 1994, Hutu leaders were determined to slaughter massive numbers of Tutsis and Hutus who opposed Habyarimana. On April 6, the plane carrying Habyarimana was shot down, and a small group of his close associates executed the planned assassination. The Presidential Guard and other troops commanded by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, backed by militia, murdered Hutu government officials and lead- ers of the political opposition, creating a vacuum in which Bagosora and his supporters could take control. Soldiers

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and militia also began systematically slaughtering Tutsis. Within hours, military officers and administrators far from the capital dispatched soldiers and militia to kill Tutsi and Hutu political leaders in their local areas. After months of warnings, rumors, and prior attacks, the violence struck panic among Rwandans and foreigners alike.

The rapidity of the first killings gave the impression of large numbers of assailants, but their impact resulted more from ruthlessness and organization than from great numbers. A U.N. expert evaluating population loss in Rwanda estimated that 800,000 Rwandans had died between April and July 1994. The RPF eventually was able to overcome the government and set up a new one. One of its most praised actions was the establishment of a unity and recon- ciliation commission as an avenue for people to express their feelings and to reflect on the past with a view to find- ing ways to build a united society.

In the United States

The issue of assisted suicide occupied American headlines for most of the 1990s, due in part to the actions of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. A retired pathologist, Kevorkian assisted a 54-year-old woman who had Alzheimer’s disease to end her life in June 1990 and later helped at least 50 other people die. He repeatedly faced and was acquitted of criminal charges for his role in the deaths, all of which took place in Michigan. However, in late 1998, he crossed from pas- sive to active euthanasia when he gave a man a lethal injection, rather than simply providing the man the means to kill himself, and videotaped the act for broadcast on national television, daring prosecutors to charge him with murder. They took him up on that dare, and in early 1999, Kevorkian was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison.

Attempts to legalize assisted suicide through voter initiative were defeated in Washington State in 1991 and in California in 1992. More than 20 state legislatures considered and defeated similar laws during the 1990s. In Novem- ber 1994, Oregon became the first state to make assisted suicide legal. Its law, passed by a slim margin in a voter ref- erendum, allows doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients who meet certain qualifications. The law was blocked until 1997, when voters overwhelmingly ratified it and it went into effect. Most groups of med- ical professionals, including the American Medical Association, officially oppose assisted suicide.

Several events throughout the decade pointed to a growing sense of unrest in the United States. In 1991, a video- tape of four White Los Angeles police officers beating and kicking Rodney King, a Black man, after a routine traf- fic stop made national headlines. In 1992, when the police officers were handed a verdict of not guilty, racial riots broke out in south central Los Angeles, leading to several days of looting and other violence. The riots left 55 peo- ple dead, more than 2,000 injured, and 1,100 buildings destroyed. The reality of unresolved racial tension in the country could not be denied.

In 1993, personnel from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) raided the Branch Davidian com- pound in Waco, Texas, after receiving reports that the cult group was illegally amassing weapons. The ATF’s search warrant was executed in a “no-knock, dynamic entry” style attack on the community center, called Mount Carmel, a home shared by 130 men, women, and children. In the gunfight that resulted, six Davidians and four ATF agents were killed. When the ATF agents ran out of ammunition, they retreated from direct attack but kept the Davidians surrounded by armed forces. The siege was taken over by the FBI the next day and continued for 51 days. On April 19, claiming frustration over the Davidians’ refusal to leave the building, the FBI used tanks to insert gas into Mount Carmel; a fire broke out, and 76 of the 85 people remaining in the center died. The tragedy fueled the growth of many clandestine militia groups throughout the United States that vowed to keep the federal government at check.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two sympathizers with the clandestine militia ideology, carried out a terrorist attack that shook the nation. McVeigh had traveled to Waco, Texas, during the 1993 standoff between the Branch Davidians and federal agents and was said to have been angry about what he saw. On April 19, 1995, with the help of Nichols, McVeigh detonated a truck full of explosives outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Build- ing in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 8 federal marshals and 19 children. McVeigh and Nichols were charged and convicted for the bombing. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection in 2001.

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The nation once again was shaken on April 20, 1999, when students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. They killed 12 students, 1 teacher, and them- selves. Investigators later revealed that parents and authorities had overlooked many warning signals before the deadly shootout. This incident focused attention on the sense of isolation and alienation of students and brought to light the limited services that exist for this age group.

Political scandal seemed to be a mark of the decade. In 1990, Washington, DC, Mayor Marion Barry, Jr., was arrested by the FBI in a drug sting and later convicted of misdemeanor drug possession. In 1991, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment when she worked for him 10 years ear- lier. In 1994, questions of financial misdealing on the part of President Bill Clinton and his wife began to be inves- tigated, leading to the Whitewater scandal.

By far, however, the greatest scandal was Clinton’s admission in 1998 of an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky after denying it several times under oath. The House of Representatives convicted Clinton of per- jury and obstruction of justice and moved for impeachment. The Senate later acquitted, but also censured, the pres- ident. In spite of this scandal, the president’s approval rating with the public soared to an all-time high of nearly 76%.

As mentioned earlier, terrorism came to American soil for the first time in the 1990s. In February 1993, a car bomb explosion at the World Trade Center in New York City killed 6 people and injured more than 1,000 people. Investigations revealed a plot involving a self-exiled Egyptian fundamentalist Islamic, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. In 1995, Abdel-Rahman and nine followers were found guilty. Abdel-Rahman’s supporters threatened retaliation if he was extradited to Egypt on prior charges. Little did the American public imagine this event was a prelude to a much more dire terrorist attack in 2001.

The 1990s brought some landmark legislation with the potential of substantially changing the opportunities for social participation of people with disabilities. In 1990, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act was amended (P.L. 101–476) and renamed the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, providing guarantees of inclusion for children in the public education system. That same year, President Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) on the White House lawn, witnessed by thousands of disability rights activists. The law was the most sweeping disability rights legislation in history, for the first time bringing full legal citizenship to Ameri- cans with disabilities. Considered by many the civil rights act for people with disabilities, the ADA mandates that local, state, and federal governments and programs be accessible, that businesses with more than 15 employees make “reasonable accommodations” for workers with disabilities, and that public places such as restaurants and stores make “reasonable modifications” to ensure access for disabled members of the public. The act also mandates access in public transportation, communication, and other areas of public life.

With passage of the ADA, American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) changed its name to Amer- ican Disabled for Attendant Programs Today and shifted its focus to advocating for personal assistance services so people with disabilities can live in the community with real supports instead of nursing homes and other institu- tions. By 1990, about 2 million Americans were residing in nursing homes and other institutions because federal or state subsidies were available only to people living in such institutions. Noting that every state that received Medic- aid must provide nursing home services and that community-based services were optional, ADAPT began drafting a bill in an attempt to fundamentally change the long-term-care system. This bill, the Medicaid Community Atten- dant Services and Supports Act (MiCASSA), was first introduced to Congress in 1997. MiCASSA proposed shifts in the proportion of Medicaid long-term-care dollars spent in community and institutional services. In addition, the bill proposed the development of a national program of community-based attendant services and supports for peo- ple with disabilities. There was legal precedence for the development of this bill. In 1995, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in Helen L. v. Snider that the continued publicly funded institutionalization of a disabled Pennsylvania woman in a nursing home, when not medically necessary and where the state could offer her the option of home care, was a violation of her rights under the ADA. MiCASSA was not passed in 1997 and has been reintroduced nearly every year since then.

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