A young Dutch woman, wearing combat fatigues and trekking through the jungle, has appeared in a video broadcast on local television pleading with family members to forgive her for joining Colombia's largest rebel group.
The undated video of the self-declared rebel "Eillen" is the latest chapter in a saga that for the past week has captivated Colombians unaccustomed to seeing foreigners take up arms in its bloody, long-running armed conflict.
"Mother will explain why I wasn't able to communicate with you all," Eillen, speaking to relatives in Dutch, said in the video first broadcast on Friday night on RCN television.
PHOTO: ANP
"I know for mom and dad this was a very difficult period," she said
RCN provided a translation of the video into Spanish.
Eillen's existence was revealed this week when El Tiempo newspaper printed what it said were excerpts from the Dutch woman's handwritten diary, which was captured by the army in a recent raid on a guerrilla camp.
CONFIRMATION
Following the report, relatives in the Netherlands confirmed her real name is Tanja Nijmeijer and the 29-year-old joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on a trip to Colombia in 2002.
Eillen's diary describes in detail the hardships of trying to survive in the jungle and conforming to the FARC's strict code of discipline -- no smoking, no telephone calls to family and no romantic relationships with other guerrillas without the express consent of the rebel commander.
"I called home!" she wrote on Aug. 23 of last year. "Mom cried and dad too. Now all I have to wait for is my punishment."
Two months later, in another entry, she complained: "I'm tired, tired of the FARC, tired of the people and tired of communal life."
Nevertheless, Eillen repeatedly reaffirmed in the diary her commitment to the revolution, declaring at one point that "the jungle is my home."
CONCERN
Nijmeijer's family told Dutch national broadcaster NOS in a statement that they had kept quiet about their daughter's involvement with the FARC out of concern for her safety. Her parents also fear that the appearance of entries from her diary in the media could endanger her life.
"By joining the FARC, she has gone extremely far in her idealism," the family said. "We have the strong impression that she has been influenced badly by certain contacts. Because of her idealism, she was naturally also very sensitive to external influences."
According to the statement, Nijmeijer's mother traveled to a guerrilla camp in 2005 to seek her daughter's return home, but "Tanja's mind was not to be changed."
CRITICISM
Although Nijmeijer is likely to be considered a terrorist under Colombian law, Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo, who escaped six years of rebel captivity last December, expressed concern for her safety because of her criticism of the FARC in the diary.
Araujo, on an unrelated tour of Europe, said she would be eligible for an amnesty if she manages to flee the guerrilla unit in eastern Colombia where she is believed to be. She would then also need to renounce all ties to the rebels.
"To the degree that you give space to organizations representing the FARC here in Europe, they will continue to recruit heedless young men and women who believe a totally untrue story, thus exposing themselves to die for causes that have no validity in real life," Araujo told journalists on Friday in Brussels.
In the video, which was obtained from the laptop computer of a rebel commander also seized during the raid, Nijmeijer can be seen hauling a heavy backpack in the company of other guerrillas.
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