"Nowhere is home for us" - Rohingya massacre survivor's sorrow, one year on...

A Rohingya refugee gang-raped by soldiers before seeing her family slaughtered and burnt to death in front of her never wants to return to Myanmar, a year on from the massacre.

Dildar Begum only has 11-year-old daughter Nur as a comfort and fellow survivor of military-led ‘scorched-earth’ violence that broke out a year ago on Saturday.
They are among those who managed to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where it is now estimated almost 1million of Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic-minority Rohingya refugees are living as a result of the latest crisis.
Aid agencies such as Unicef, who have been helping Dildar and others, are warning on ongoing torture, monsoon flooding risks and a lack of access to food, water and medical aid.
Dildar, 30, told how haunting memories of the atrocity - including her husband being stabbed to death in front of her and her daughter being attacked with a machete - are seldom far from her mind but have been exacerbated by the approaching anniversary.

"Surrounded by love" - Jo Cox's mission continues, two years after her murder...

Anger, despair and yet also hope are emotions driving the mourning sister of murdered MP Jo Cox as the second anniversary of her shocking killing looms this Saturday.

Kim Leadbeater told Metro she and her family still feel ‘numb’, two years since far-right terrrorist Thomas Mair stabbed and shot the mother-of-two to death in her West Yorkshire constituency.

But she thanked the public for keeping them going with a wave of support - including thousands of events being planned to mark what would have been Mrs Cox’s 44th birthday later this month.

Ms Leadbeater, 42, is spearheading the ‘Great Get Together’, a three-day nationwide celebration first held last year on the first anniversary of the murder.

The events - from music and festivities on London’s South Bank to street parties, coffee mornings and picnics, iftars and communal dog walks - are centred on Mrs Cox’s ‘more in common’ philosophy.

She used the phrase in her maiden Commons speech after being elected for her home constituency of Batley and Spen at the 2015 general election - just 13 months before her violent death aged 41.

Ms Leadbeater is taking the lead ahead of this year’s Great Get Together, with plenty planned for the weekend of June 22-24 - but the pain of suddenly losing her elder sister still lingers, yet inspires.

RIP Gena Turgel...

RIP Gena Turgel, who has died in London aged 95 - a Holocaust survivor who shared a concentration camp with and comforted Anne Frank, who herself was born 89 years ago today and was given her first diary 76 years ago today. A privilege to speak to lifelong campaigner Gena ahead of last year's Holocaust Memorial Day...

January 27, 2017: A Holocaust survivor who survived a concentration camp gas chamber as a child fears the world is suffering a new neo-Nazi rise.
Gena Turgel, 91, told Metro that this year’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day today is shrouded by far-right insurgencies in Europe and across the Atlantic.
Mrs Turgel, who has lived in London since escaping Nazi Germany in 1945, saw two brothers shot dead by the Nazis and spent four years in three different concentration camps.
France’s National Front leader Marine Le Pen is expected to contest the presidential run-off election later this year while hardline right-wing chiefs have come to prominence and power in Hungary, Serbia and Greece.
New US president Donald Trump has also been scrutinised over the white supremacist views expressed by some of his closest aides - and his backing from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Mrs Turgel, now living in Stanmore in north-west London, said: ‘It’s terrible - I’m very surprised, but these people are criminals.
‘They should be arrested, for disturbing the lives of so many others.
‘They want to destroy the peace and happiness we’ve tried to build.
‘I can’t understand, after all we’ve been through, that children are growing up in this environment.’

"Our heroes in a crisis..."

Terror attacks and the Grenfell Tower tragedy have made the past 12 months the British Red Cross’s busiest year since the Second World War, for an army of emergency response volunteers.

More than 1,000 recruits have been called to the scenes of atrocities over the last year - with many doubling or even tripling up, helping not only victims and survivors of Grenfell but also the London Bridge, Finsbury Park mosque and Manchester Arena disasters.

Now a dozen of them are being celebrated by the charity by featuring in a new photoshoot, unveiled today after being spearheaded by award-winning artist Rankin - ahead of next week’s Red Cross Week, 148 years since the British branch of the charity was founded.