Tanja Nijmeijer - Here are pictures and video of 29-year-old Dutch national Tanja Nijmeijer who voluntarily joined the FARC marxist rebel group in Columbia four years ago.
A laptop belonging to Tanja Nijmeijer seized by the Columbian army in September was found to contain video footage expressing her desire to leave the Marxist group, but stating she was now being held against her will.
Tanja Nijmeijer Video
In addition, a diary found in the raided camp written by someone who identified herself as ‘Eillen’ on the camp’s premises has also been linked to Tanja Nijmeijer.
Eillen’s diary indicates the young woman is working as a translator for the Eastern division of the guerrilla organization.
The journal notes that she initially joined FARC of her own free will in 2002 when travelling to Colombia for a second time in two years, saying she was fascinated at that time by Colombian Marxism.
Tanja Nijmeijer at university:
The writings in her diary, however, suggest that after her fascination with FARC subsided, she was unable to leave the group. The guerillas have also prohibited her from making contact with her family in the Netherlands.
On August 26, 2006 she managed to call her family. ‘I called home,’ she writes in her diary. ‘Mom cried and so did Dad. Now I need to wait for my punishment, because everyone is allowed to call, except me.’
Several entries in her diary speak of her dreams of escaping the organization and returning to the Netherlands.
Photo of Tanja’s diaries recovered by Columbian army:
Elsewhere, the diary states: ‘I am tired, tired of FARC, tired of these people, tired of communal life and of not having anything for myself. If only we knew what we were fighting for, then it would at least be worthwhile.’
‘I do not believe in it (FARC) any more. What kind of organization is this? Some have money, cigarettes and sweets. The rest has to beg for everything only to be rejected by those who do have everything.’
‘This has been the case ever since I came here four years ago. Nothing has changed.’
Colombian Minister of Foreign Affairs Fernando Araújo Perdomo told Dutch reporters in an interview in Brussels that Nijmeijer’s life was in danger following the release of her diary, containing criticism of FARC.
‘These terrorists execute and kill anyone who wants to desert,’ Perdomo said, ‘That is why Tanja Nijmeijer’s life is in serious danger now.’
Perdomo was also abducted and held hostage by FARC. He managed to escape after six years, on New Year’s Eve 2006.
Tanja and her mother in 1999:
And that’s the latest news on 29-year old Dutch national and FARC soldier Tanja Nijmeijer.
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November 26th, 2007 at 11:15 am
[...] hitsusa wrote an interesting post today on Tanja Nijmeijer Here’s a quick excerpt Perdomo was also abducted and held hostage by FARC. He managed to escape after six years, on New Year’s Eve 2006. And that’s the latest news on 29-year old Dutch national and FARC soldier Tanja Nijmeijer. Tags: News, Video, Web Site … [...]
November 26th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Quote from a foriegn news story about the laptop and Tanja’s diary:
Colombian soldiers surprised Nijmeijer’s FARC unit along Guayabero River in central Colombia. They also recovered a computer belonging to unit commander Carlos Antonio Lozada.
“The chief has fallen for a girl with big tits,” Nijmeijer reports in a Nov. 2, 2006, entry. “But it appears she brought some venereal disease with her. The chief says the government sent her in order to infect and weaken the rebel leaders.”
Guess the bloom is off the rose….
November 26th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Like many liberal-minded but hopelessly misled people, being in love with the mystery and danger of being a leftist rebel is more important than the awful truth that the principles for which many leftists are allegedly fighting are as fascist as the most tyrannical dictators in history. In fact, some of the most tyrannical dictators in history, responsible for most of the death in the past century, have been “communists”, such as Mao and Stalin. Pol Pot murdered millions in Cambodia pursuing an inane plan of agrarian utiopia which sounds suspiciously like the lifestyle undertaken by FARC, the Viet Cong were responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, and who knows how many have perished under Cuba’s King Fidel I, or his successor, King Raul I. Now, King Hugo I of Venezuela is embarking on his own 50 year reign, also espousing a frighteningly familiar leftist agenda that echoes the horrific trauma exacted on the people of Cambodia by Pol Pot’s regime, complete with imposing collectives, purging universities and schools, and silencing all opposition. Leftist Evo Morales is not far behind. How many will die in the name of a socialist agenda that is neither socialist nor sensible? How many will die from the violence that is needed to force people to live in a system that is both unnatural and unwanted? Communism requires tyranny and dictatorship because no one wants to live in this way - which brings us to the disillusioned Dutch girl - who wants to fight for living this way? Where’s the advantage of imposing this insane kind of a system on a country? In any event, “communism” as it is used today merely means “totalitarian dictatorship.” Chavez, Castro, Morales, Hu Jin-tao, and the rest can keep it.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
From today’s CNN story:
In the diary, Nijmeijer abhors the strict discipline imposed by FARC’s male commanders — no smoking, no phone calls, no romantic relationships without their consent. She says the rank and file are hungry and bored, and describes FARC leaders as both materialistic and corrupt.
“How will it be when we take power? The wives of the commanders in Ferrari Testa Rossas with breast implants eating caviar?” she writes.
Santos told AP that the Nijmeijer case should help rid foreign leftists of the notion that the FARC is heroic.
“In certain circles in Europe, there still exists the romantic image of the guerrillas as Robin Hood, or Che Guevara, fighting the bad guys for the benefit of the poor,” he said. “Nijmeijer fell into this trap.”
Nijmeijer wrote her thesis on the FARC at the University of Groningen in her homeland, then traveled to Colombia in 2000 on a work-exchange program.
Read more on Tanja here:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/25/dutch.guerrilla.ap/
March 7th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Her idealism is admirable. What she is finding is that life on the ground in rural, third world conditions is probably harsher than she anticipated. What’s more, life in an armed conflict is tedious - if she read “Homage to Catalonia” she might have learned something about this. Maybe she did read it and wasn’t convinced, since she is after all well educated. (Certainly more so than Lee above, who in his FOX News version of history, puts Evo Morales in the same category as Pol Pot.) In any case, let’s hope that her idealism and commitment to class struggle is tempered rather than extinguished by these experiences. The most important point seems to be this: the situation with FARC is seems full of contradictions. There are many factors related to FARC that make its situation complicated: its alleged involvement in the narcotics trade, its apparently endless stalemate with the Columbian government, its supposed use of young people as soldiers, and not least of all its very use of violence as a political tool. All of these are questionable and probably confusing for an outsider who joined the movement out of personal commitment. But as stated at the beginning, this leap of hers is admirable. Most people, by contrast, are cowards. We can only hope that she keeps her belief inspite of realizing that the the real world of conflict is full of gradations of right and wrong as well as paradox.
March 27th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Seems like government propaganda bullshit to me.
Why not show the pages of the diary???
Don’t believe the hype.