Refugee Week campaigners will commemorate Jo Cox MP, who was tragically killed in her constituency this week, and her role as a champion of refugees by calling for a minute’s silence at Refugee Week events across the country from 19-26 June.
A statement on the Refugee Website said:
The shocking and senseless death of Jo Cox has broken the heart of the whole country. It is with great sadness that Refugee Week marks the passing of a great campaigning MP who championed the rights of refugees.
In her charity career before entering parliament Jo also worked tirelessly for people around the world who were oppressed and displaced.
We therefore ask that in your events for Refugee Week in the coming days you take a few moments to pause and reflect on Jo’s life and work, and to think about her husband, Brendan, himself a great campaigner for refugees, and their two small children.
In her maiden speech in Parliament, Jo said that ‘we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us’.
We hope that people will remember those hopeful words as communities come together to mark Refugee Week.
Friends of Jo and her husband Brendan have also set up the Jo Cox Fund to raise money for three charities close to her heart, chosen by her family:
The Royal Voluntary Service, to support volunteers helping combat loneliness in Jo’s constituency, Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire.
HOPE not hate, who seek to challenge and defeat the politics of hate and extremism within local communities across Britain.
The White Helmets: volunteer search and rescue workers in Syria. Unarmed and neutral, these heroes have saved more than 51,000 lives from under the rubble and bring hope to the region.
British Future trustee Imam Qari Asim led tributes to Mrs Cox at Leeds Makkah Mosque
@LeedsMosque paying tribute to #JoCox– a passionate campaigner & thoughtful individual who cared for communities pic.twitter.com/OC9szhMxEQ
— Qari Asim MBE (@QariAsim) June 17, 2016
Our thoughts at British Future are with Jo’s children and husband Brendan, who made this moving and dignified statement yesterday:
“Today is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. More difficult, more painful, less joyful, less full of love. I and Jo’s friends and family are going to work every moment of our lives to love and nurture our kids and to fight against the hate that killed Jo.
“Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people.
“She would have wanted two things above all else to happen now, one that our precious children are bathed in love and two, that we all unite to fight against the hatred that killed her. Hate doesn’t have a creed, race or religion, it is poisonous.
“Jo would have no regrets about her life, she lived every day of it to the full.”
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