Amy Biehl

Amy Elizabeth Biehl (April 26, 1967 – August 25, 1993) was an American college student at Stanford University and an Anti-Apartheid activist in South Africa. She studied at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town as a scholar in the Fulbright Program.

When Biehl drove a friend home to the township of Guguletu, outside Cape Town, on August 25, 1993, a black mob pelted her car with stones and smashed its windows while shouting racial epithets. Biehl was struck in the head with a brick, then dragged from her car. She was surrounded as she tried to escape and was stoned and stabbed to death. Four of the men complicit in Biehl's murder were convicted for it; however, all four were pardoned in 1998, several years after the end of Apartheid. Biehl's family supported release of the killers; her father shook the murderers' hands, stating that

At about the same time, Biehl's parents founded the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust to develop and empower youth in the townships, in order to discourage further violence.

Amy Biehl High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico is named after Amy Elizabeth Biehl.

External links

* [http://www.amybiehl.org/ Amy Biehl Foundation (US site)]
* [http://www.amybiehl.co.za/ Amy Biehl Foundation (South African site)]
* [http://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=a_biehl| Peacemaker Hero: Amy Biehl]
* [http://globalization.about.com/library/weekly/aa073098.htm|The Amy Biehl Legacy]