Glasgow Girl's journey from asylum seeker to MSP bid

When she first arrived in Glasgow as a frightened, confused and extremely cold 12-year-old, Roza Salih had no idea she was at the beginning of a journey that would see her go from schoolgirl campaigner to a potential MSP in less than 20 years.

It all started on a wet and windy late October night back in 2001, when she was bundled out the back of a van and left standing on the damp, grey concrete in front of high-rise flats in an area that couldn’t have seemed any further from home if it had been on Mars.

Unable to speak a word of English, she had just fled from war-torn Kurdistan where a family member had been brutally murdered.

But less than four years later she was part a group of high school friends known as the ‘Glasgow Girls’ who led a successful campaign to stop their friend and fellow Drumchapel High School pupil Agnesa Murselaj being deported.

It was an inspirational story that made national headlines, changed laws and was immortalised on television and stage.

Now 15 years later, the 31-year-old politics graduate is hoping the experience will hold her in good stead as she seeks nomination to be the SNP candidate for Clydebank and Milngavie in next May’s Holyrood elections.

Recalling her first experience of Glasgow she said: “My first thought was ‘it’s so cold here’ and we weren’t used to it because back in our country it is like 40C. So the weather was something different. I was thinking ‘what are we doing here?’.”

With no money and no local knowledge they were handed food tokens from the Home Office and left to find their own way around.

Feeling constantly helpless and lost, even small details such as finding the nearest supermarket, then one that would accept the tokens, became an arduous task as the family struggled to find their feet in the area.