Word: biehl
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last week Biehl, 26, a Fulbright scholar dedicated to hastening South African democracy, became the first American victim of the pitiless violence that has accompanied the country's slow transformation. Her nationality was not significant to the teenagers who knifed her repeatedly in the head: her skin color was reason enough. But her murder was another indication that the violent, sometimes anti-white rhetoric adopted by some political groups is finding expression in action. The death of an idealist is not the death of idealism, but it sent a chilly message to those who hope that good intentions...
...radiant girl who fell in love with cultural diversity in high school among Santa Fe's Hispanics and Native Americans and was drawn in college toward the possibilities of black sovereignty in Africa. "She wanted to make a difference," says classmate Katie Bolich. "She was so committed." Biehl wrote her honors thesis at Stanford University on Chester Crocker, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who helped bring independence to Namibia. In 1989 she traveled there and developed a close friendship with Namibian President Sam Nujoma...
Last Wednesday Biehl was preparing to leave Cape Town. She was to fly back to Stanford on Friday to begin doctoral studies. As she had done for months, Biehl offered some fellow students a lift back to their homes in the black townships. They piled into Biehl's mustard-colored Mazda, the one with the bumper sticker reading OUR LAND NEEDS PEACE. Around 5 p.m., as she drove into the township of Guguletu, a group of teenagers hurled stones at the car. Trapped behind another vehicle, Biehl was a sitting target for the brick that shattered her windshield...
...arson. But the "settlers" remark and a shirt allegedly worn by one of the attackers pointed toward the Pan-Africanist Students' Organization, a wing of the Pan-Africanist Congress, which coined the motto "One Settler, One Bullet," and the police arrested two teenage P.A.S.O. members. When informed of Biehl's death, P.A.S.O. president Tsietsi Telite said unrepentantly, "The youths and students are so angry and frustrated that when they see someone they identify with the dispossessing classes, anything can happen -- and could happen again...
...Newport Beach, California, the Biehl family has been deluged with faxes and telephone calls from friends and advisers in different schools, from the White House, from Namibia, from Biehl's South African friends. In these she is repeatedly referred to as a "sister." The loving condolences are inspiring, says Amy's mother Linda. "She was part of something. They're a kind of reconstruction of the world she lived in." A world of forgiving, compassionate people, a place that has yet to be reconciled with the world in which she died...