Linda Polman

Linda Polman (b. 1960) is an investigative journalist based in Amsterdam. She has worked in various war zones and developing countries such as Somalia, Rwanda, Haïti, Sierra Leone, Congo and Afghanistan. She is the author of, among other titles, The Crisis Caravan, which was translated into nine languages. Polman’s work has been discussed internationally, including on John Stewart’s The Daily Show and in The New Yorker. For Death Row Dollies, about European women who link their fates to inmates on death row in the US, she spent an extended period in Texas. When in the Netherlands, Polman lectures for university journalism programs.

’k Zag twee beren

De achterkant van de VN-vredesmissies

(Rozenberg Publishers, 2002, 268 pagina's)

April 1995: Linda Polman is the only Western journalist present in the UN refugee camp Kibeho in Rwanda. She witnesses how eighty Zambian Blue Helmets are forced to watch helplessly as 150,000 Hutu refugees are driven together by Tutsi government troops. Many thousands are then murdered. After the bodies have been dragged away by the government soldiers, the Rwandan president visits the site and asks Captain Francis, commanding officer of the Zambian Blue Helmets, for his estimate of the number of victims. ‘The Zambian cautiously rounds it down to 4,000, a figure the president does not like at all. “I have the impression you are exaggerating,” he states coldly, preferring to stick to…

De crisiskaravaan

De achterkant van de humanitaire noodhulpindustrie

(Balans, 2008, 256 pagina's)

Imagine receiving a phone call from the Nazis: You may deliver aid to the concentration camps, but the camp management will decide how much goes to the staff and how much to the prisoners. What do you do? Linda Polman starts her book with a bang with this dilemma. It is the question that humanitarian organizations wrestle with, whether to remain neutral or to withdraw if wrongful use is made of their assistance, especially now that the majority of today’s war victims are civilians.

Death Row Dollies

Leven met de doodstraf

(Bertram en de Leeuw, 2015, 264 pagina's)

The best way of making abstract suffering tangible is through personal stories. In Death Row Dollies, investigative journalist Linda Polman plunges into the bizarre universe of the American death penalty ‘industry’ and those crushed in it.

Niemand wil ze hebben

Europa en zijn vluchtelingen

(Jurgen Maas, 2019, 279 pagina's)

In the summer of 1938 in the French spa town of Evian, the leaders of Europe convened for what was to be the first international summit on a European refugee crisis. The number of Jews attempting to flee Nazi-Germany had skyrocketed and refugee centres were urgently needed. Representatives from all of Western Europe attended, and their arguments against taking in those refugees sound only too familiar to us today: their cultures would be endangered, their jobs and houses would be snatched, and the cohesion of their societies would ultimately disintegrate.

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