by Sasha Said
Staff Reporter
The Deerfield Scroll
February 23, 2000

Often the establishment of democracy comes at the cost of lives. Amy Biehl, an advocate of democracy, was brutally murdered due to political unrest in South Africa. Her parents Linda and Peter Biehl, will be coming to speak to students on March 27, 2000. Linda and Peter Biehl hope to better inform Deerfield students of political peace and equality through the compelling story of their daughter's murder.

Amy Biehl was a Stanford University graduate who had traveled to South Africa to help voter registration in the country's first democratic election, which would mark the end of apartheid. One night she was driving some friends home to the black township of Gugletu, outside of Cape Town, when a group of angry young black men forced her car to stop. They dragged her out of the car, hit her over the head with a brick, and stabbed her in the heart. Amy's killers knew nothing of her involvement in the upcoming election or that she was American. They singled her out purely because she was white.

Four men were tried and convicted of Amy Biehl's murder and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. But in July, 1997, the same four came before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pleading for amnesty, saying that they felt deep remorse for what they had done. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 1995 and had the power to grant amnesty to anyone who made a full confession to committing politically motivated crimes. The committee was to be established for a period of two years and has since been disbanded.

Peter and Linda Biehl attended the committee hearing and listened to their daughter's killers plead for freedom. They believed that Amy had been on the side of the people who killed her, and in the interest of political peace they publicly stated that they would not stand in the way of the four men's freedom.

Since Amy's death, the Biehls have set up the Amy Biehl Foundation, whose soul purpose is to empower people who are politically or economically oppressed. The Biehls are even trying to arrange traveling in the US with two of the killers, in hopes of educating the public about political peace and equality, carrying on their daughter's dream.

Paul Dichter articulated it smoothly, in an assignment for visiting Bicentennial fellow Malcolm McKenzie's literature class that is posted on a Biehl website, saying, "In pardoning those who killed your daughter you did a great deed, something I can only hope I would have done were I in your position." As human beings, having complicated emotions, the Biehls have risen above any action expected of them and have displayed to us what real love and humility are.