Dutch Woman who Joined FARC to Participate in Peace Talks

This week in Cuba, peace talks will begin in earnest between the government of Colombia and the leftist rebel group, the FARC.

Among the FARC leaders in attendance, one sticks out.

Her name is Tanja Nijmeijer.

She’s not from Colombia or even South America — she’s Dutch.

And her story is pretty fascinating.

It’s said that her impressive physical strength and intellect helped to propel her through the rebels’ ranks.

Freelance writer Miriam Wells in Medellin, Colombia, said Tanja Nijmeijer quickly evolved from foreign student to guerilla woman.

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Marco Werman: This week in Cuba, peace talks will begin in earnest between the government of Colombia and the leftist rebel group, the FARC. Among the FARC leaders in attendance, one stands out. Her name is Tanja Nijmeijer, and she’s not from Colombia or even South America. She’s Dutch, and her story is pretty fascinating. It’s said that her impressive physical strength and intellect helped to propel her through the rebels’ ranks. Miriam Wells is a writer based in Medellin, Colombia, who’s familiar with how Nijmeijer came to join the FARC.

Miriam Wells: She came originally as a language student in 1998. She had the opportunity to teach English in Colombia, and she says that very quickly after arriving she was shocked by the vast levels of inequality and poverty she saw around her. Colombia was and remains one of the most unequal countries in terms of the difference between rich and poor. And she grew to sympathize with what the FARC was doing. She said she spent a lot of time with a teacher, a fellow teacher at the school, who was a Communist and, as it later turned out, he was a member of the FARC himself. And she says that by the time she returned to Holland she was consumed by the fever of revolution, and she felt that the revolution would take place one day and she wanted to be a part of it.

Werman: And is she, was she, a naive foreigner?

Wells: I don’t think it would be fair to describe her as naive. She’s a very intelligent young woman, she speaks four different languages. It’s been claimed that she was brainwashed, that she was forcibly recruited without really knowing what she was doing, but, you know, I don’t think that’s true. She returned to Holland and spent a year or two as a socialist activist back there. She had a lot of time to think about what she was doing and she planned to return, it wasn’t a sudden thing.

Werman: Right, so she returns to Bogota in 2002. What kind of things did she actually do with the FARC? I mean, was she kind of a common foot soldier, or did they give her bigger jobs to carry out?

Wells: She was a part of Bogota’s urban militia. She started out with sort of surveillance tasks, with intelligence, with finding out, for instance, when transport workers would be going in and out of terminals. The typical kind of activities in the FARC at that time were attacks on public transport or on businesses. And then right before she went into the jungle, she was involved in the planning and execution of a big attack on public transport, and as the attack was about to be carried out, various people were arrested and the others had to flee, which is why Tanja then ended up going into the jungle. But she is wanted for terrorism. There’s an international arrest warrant that was put out by the US. That arrest warrant has been lifted so that she can travel to Cuba for the talks.

Werman: Now Nijmeijer’s mother tried several times in vain to get her daughter back. What exactly did she do and why didn’t it work?

Wells: Yeah, I mean, the story is so sad. The issue of the family is the saddest part of this story because she hasn’t seen them or really talked to them since she went into the jungle ten years ago. The mother traveled to Colombia, as did sister a couple of times, trying to get the daughter back. In 2005 the mother was granted a meeting in the jungle encampment her daughter was living in, but she left with the knowledge that her daughter would never leave the rebels, she said. And she also, a few years after that, traveled to Colombia again to take part in a documentary. And in that you actually see her flying over the jungle in an army helicopter, shouting through a loudspeaker begging her daughter to flee. She put out messages on a radio frequency meant to be listened to by the FARC, again appealing to her daughter to leave the rebels. They’ve become shunned in Holland where their daughter is seen as this terrorist. It’s just been really, really sad for them.

Werman: Tanja Nijmeijer early on spoke of the political affinity she felt for the FARC with their Communist ideals, but those ideals, as a lot of people know, kind of went out the window as they tried to just fuel their movement through drug revenues and tried to overthrow the Colombian government and she sensed that kind of betrayal of those values. If she has that sense of doubt about the FARC, how much do you think she’ll actually feel committed to any positive outcome in these peace talks in Cuba?

Wells: Well, she says that she’s fully committed to their ideals. There was the famous publication of some diaries of hers that were discovered in an abandoned jungle encampment in 2007 where indeed she did talk about disillusionment. She said that life with the FARC was like a prison, it would be worth it if I knew what we were fighting for, but I just don’t know what we’re fighting for any more. She later said her words had been manipulated and she released a video saying she was and would remain a proud member of the FARC. And again, in a press conference that she’s given about a week ago in Cuba, she has again stated full commitment with their ideals. She says that they are fighting for social justice and that’s all they’ve ever fought for. They deny that they are just a drug trafficking gang. She says that she has great hopes for the peace process.

Werman: And these upcoming talks, how long are they supposed to run for? Are they kind of open-ended?

Wells: That’s one of the interesting elements. President Juan Manuel Santos has said that if there’s no solution by next June, then they’ll abandon the talks, which to many people just seems like an absurdly short amount of time, given that previous talks have lasted for years. And you know, if you’re talking about a conflict that’s gone on for more than 50 years, can you really expect it to be resolved in a matter of months?

Werman: Miriam Wells, based in Medellin, Colombia, telling us about the story of Dutch FARC rebel Tanja Nijmeijer. Thank you.

Wells: Thank you

Werman: This is PRI.

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