'I escaped Saddam Hussein's regime as a child - now I want to be Miss England'
When she was just four years old, Roza Kurdo risked her life crossing Europe by land and sea as her family fled the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein.
Alongside her mum, she escaped savage mass killings in Iraqi Kurdistan and sought a better life in Britain.
And the former refugee has embraced her new life in the UK. Now 25, she is working as a nurse in Harley Street – and is also hoping to be crowned Miss England 2022.
But Roza admits she is troubled by the current political landscape and has called for Britain to be more welcoming to those fleeing persecution, as she once had to.
She describes the latest Government plans to send refugees to Rwanda as “horrible”.
Roza started her perilous journey in 2001, two years before the Iraq war that finally saw Saddam toppled as the country’s president.
She explains that the problems in the region dated back to the Al Anfal genocide in 1988, when Saddam’s forces killed tens of thousands of Kurdish people in northern Iraq.
Her parents had met in a refugee camp across the border in Iran, after being displaced as teenagers. Roza said: “My people, and my parents, suffered greatly during that time, escaping Saddam’s deplorable regime. Despite the horrors, they fell in love.
“Even when the worst of the violence and conflict was over, the country was still broken – children would starve, the economy was broken and people would go missing.”
Her dad had escaped the country in 1997 when Roza was still a baby. She said: “My mother and I followed about four years later. We came to England the only way we could. Boat crossings and terrifying lorry journeys.”
Now British citizens, the family have lived in Plymouth for 18 years – although Roza has had to move to Ilford, East London, for work.
