Suddenly she was the center of attention again this week. Tanja Nijmeijer, born and raised in Denekamp, and later on made world news as a member of the Colombian guerrilla movement FARC. Officially a communistic movement that stood up for oppressed citizens, but at the same time feared and infamous for its brutal attacks and a freedom struggle largely funded by blood-stained drug money.
misfit
Last week Tanja published her biography in which she extensively describes her childhood in Twente. She lives in a village that quickly becomes too small for her and where she clearly does not feel at home, as it soon becomes clear. Certainly not because she feels like an outsider at school. At primary school and later at the Carmellyceum in Oldenzaal. How she spends hours on the toilet reading (“the only place where no one bothered me”) and how, as a twelve-year-old, she borrows Freud’s “Introduction to Psychoanalysis” from the local library.
“I often borrowed four to five books a week from the tiny library that Denekamp had.”
And she writes about the dance lessons at Kolmschot in Oldenzaal. Because it is customary in the countryside of Twente that young people growing up are sent to dance school. “There we learned to dance the foxtrot and the waltz.”
Diary
She has regularly kept a diary since she was ten. It was one of those diaries that first made international headlines in 2007 after losing it when the Colombian military fired on a FARC camp. The diaries have undoubtedly served her well in writing her biography.
In the biography you can read that her mother visits her in the jungle at one point. Tanja is already being sought internationally at that time. The fact that her mother tells her how she was told beforehand that she would never come out of guerrilla territory alive again did not get through to Tanja at first. Only later does she realize what her mother must have done to be able to see her daughter again.
village gossip
But it doesn’t seem to come from a good conversation during the meeting. Mother tells, among other things, the latest gossip from Denekamp. Something that takes place literally miles away from Tanja’s experience. “Stories I no longer identified with at all. Perhaps the best way to sum up the meeting is to say that we had grown apart.”
Bomb with toothpick
Tanja also discusses the terrorist activities of the FARC in her bio. About how she once had to commit a bomb attack with fellow fighter Simón in a place where there could be no innocent victims. In which a toothpick serves as the ignition mechanism of the projectile that has been temporarily put together.
When they take the bus on their way to the attack, it turns out halfway through that the toothpick has suddenly disappeared. “I’m breaking out in a sweat,” Tanja writes.
At the next stop, the two rebels get out and throw the bomb away. Miraculously, it doesn’t go off. It does make Tanja think afterwards. “This incident could also have ended tragically and I would have been responsible for the deaths of who knows how many innocent civilians.”
Verbal on rack
In the past week she appeared in the talk show of Jinek, in which she extensively explains the reason for the book. Much has been said and written about her in recent years. With this book she wants to be able to tell her own story, without it being filtered by the media.
The performance drew considerable criticism. Because, is it appropriate to offer a stage to a terrorist in this way? However, it certainly does not end with an uncritical conversation, in which Tanja is allowed to promote her book.
Jinek puts the former guerrilla fighter several times verbally on the rack in her well-known way. Asks, among other things, whether the entire FARC struggle has not been useless. And whether it was actually worth all those sacrifices. Tanja had to fail to answer that.
This incident could also have ended tragically, then I would have been responsible for the deaths of who knows how many innocent civilians.
Notified in advance
After the FARC signed a peace agreement with the Colombian government, Tanja moved to Cali with her Colombian boyfriend Boris. They now run a cooperative there with some ex-combatants that wants to stimulate agricultural products, she writes at the end of her bio.
Did Tanja’s family know that the book was coming? “Yes, we knew that. We were notified in advance,” says an immediate family member of Tanja, who has been appointed as a spokesperson on behalf of the family. “I am indeed speaking. Especially to protect Tanja’s parents against the media. Have many media already called? Not really. But maybe they don’t know how to reach me.”
Ever back on Oale ground?
The spokesman has read Tanja’s book. “What I think about it, I don’t feel the need to respond to it. And the rest of the family doesn’t want to talk about the book either.”
He does not want to comment on the question of whether the family was able to read the book before publication and possibly had a say. And he certainly doesn’t want to say anything about Tanja’s background as a guerrilla fighter. “Tanja made her choices. We as a family have no opinion about that.”
Tanja says in the interview with Jinek that she has daily contact with her family in Twente, including via video calls.
The chance that the former guerrilla will ever return to groove pots, seems nil. After all, there is an international search warrant against her and as soon as she sets foot on Dutch soil, she runs the risk of being immediately arrested and extradited to the US. If the family ever wants to embrace Tanja again, it will have to be in a place that is safe for her. Will that ever happen again? “I don’t know,” the family member says soberly. “I can’t see into the future.”
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