Guest lecturer Biehl tells complicated story

UA Geography Program Director Mike Sfraga welcomed Linda Biehl to Fairbanks.

How could a mother not only forgive her daughter’s killers but become friends and co-workers with them? Linda Biehl, who spoke at UAF Sept. 16, said such actions are possible when people look for humanity in each other.

Biehl, founder of the Amy Biehl Foundation, was sponsored by the UA Geography Program and the Alaska World Affairs Council to speak in Fairbanks on the topic of restorative justice. Her daughter Amy Biehl was studying the role of women and gender rights during South Africa’s transition from its apartheid regime to a free multiracial democracy. Amy was killed in an act of political violence in South Africa in 1993. She had been enthralled with everything about South Africa for years and when she graduated from college her mortarboard declared “free Nelson Mandela.”

When Amy received a Fullbright scholarship to study in South Africa for ten months her mother was worried, “but you can’t think only of security and safety in everything you do. Things could happen anywhere...”

“This brings to us something we might hear about on CNN or read about in the Wall Street Journal, something that happens somewhere else to somebody else,” said UA Geography Program Director Mike Sfraga. He recalled the global impact of Amy’s death and said having Biehl come to UAF was an opportunity to examine oppression vs. freedom, and justice vs. injustice.

In the years since her daughter’s death Biehl has spent over half her time in South Africa. “I consider Capetown a home,” she said. “There is something about South Africa that gets in one’s heart and soul.” But she also said it is difficult to understand the complexity and struggles of another land.

South Africa has endured great trials but has also done amazing things, she said. “I hope the world can look at how they approached problem solving.” It was the South Africans who reached out to her and her husband Peter (who died in 2002). Six weeks after Amy was murdered, the couple was invited to visit Capetown. “People told us we shouldn’t go,” she said. They went. “It was horrific,” she said. “There was such graphic stuff in the newspapers.” Going was the first step in beginning to understand how something so awful could have happened. “Will we ever understand totally?” she asked. “No.” In the years since, she has learned all she could about the oppression that was so predominant in the apartheid years. “Education is the key to everything,” she said.

In her personal story four men were tried and convicted of Amy’s murder. After two of them received amnesty in 1998, they reached out to Biehl and eventually offered to work for the foundation, which offers educational programs in South Africa. Some of the work involves sports, after school care, arts, theater, music, health, leadership, and environmental causes. Biehl noted in the lecture that she and her husband did not approach the men; they were brave enough to make the first contact. “They had the courage to step out of their militant shoes.” Although personal reconciliation was not something the Biehls had expected, they experienced it after getting to know the men.

Biehl stressed that what she has gone through is not just forgiveness. “With forgiveness you can walk away,” she said. “Reconciling is knowing and working together. Our (foundation) programs are part of that reconciliation; that is the joyful part for me.”

While traveling recently, Biehl came across this quote in a Nelson DeMille novel: “To know and to understand is the first step in reconciliation.” She recalled as she got to know the young men she began to understand them and to care for them. They normally travel with her and participate in her presentations, and she said sometimes she feels lost when they aren’t with her, as they are very kind to her and look out for her.

Now that it has been sixteen years since Amy’s death, Biehl wondered aloud if her story still has meaning. “It is more relevant today than ever because there is so much polarization,” she said.

She advises that everyone read Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. “People thought Mandela would come out of prison and there would be a bloodbath. He said no. He has brought dignity back to South Africa. That is really the miracle of it.”

As she concluded, Biehl said hers and Amy’s is a complicated story. “Underneath it you find great people,” she said. “We are in this thing together.”