The white woman’s burden and the Dutch tulip on the table: The representation of Tanja Nijmeijer in Dutch media (2007-2016)

In September 2007, the Colombian army released to the press some parts of the diary written by a Dutch woman who was a member of the FARC, a left-wing guerrilla fighting against the Government. Since then, and during the next dec-ade, Tanja Nijmeijer had a recurrent mediatic presence, particularly in Dutch media, and as a result, the Colombian conflict was also a part of the mediatic coverage of the Dutch press. During the period between September 2007 and November 2016, Tanja Nijmeijer received hundreds of mentions in the media with three attention peaks, in 2007, when the diaries where found and her exist-ence became public, in 2010, when an interview was published and there was uncertainty about whether she had died in a bombardment against the second FARC commander, and in 2012, when the FARC announced that she was part of the negotiating team in Havana, on the occasion of the peace talks with the government. To fulfill the analysis, a revision was made of Dutch media material in the above-mentioned lapse. The basis of the research was the online material of newspaper ‘De Volkskrant’, but in support of the analysis, there was also a revi-sion of material from ‘De Telegraaf’, ‘NOS’, ‘Joop’ and two books published on the topic. The methodology used in the research corresponds to framing and focalization, and the pretension of the study is to depict the way in which Tanja Nijmeijer was represented by Dutch Media. v The paper has the objective to determine how Tanja Nijmeijer was rep-resented in terms of otherness and gender. The research showed that Tanja Nijmeijer representation was used by Dutch media as a prism to present the Colombian conflict, so that in various occasions the analysis of the Colombian situation was ignored to deliver information about the personal life of Tanja Nijmeijer. Indeed, it was concluded that the representation of Tanja Nijmeijer and the Colombian conflict, portrayed an image of what is acceptable or not in a person to be a Dutch, particularly in terms of the moral authority to help re-store social justice in countries from the global south. Thus, the conception of Dutchness and otherness was central in the representation, in terms of the power relations derived from this opposition. Finally, the study showed how gender relations of power affected the framing of Tanja Nijmeijer, first as a Dutch fe-male fighter in an illegal group in the third world, and later as a Dutch member of the negotiation team of the FARC in Havana.