“I was abducted three years ago, when I was 19. I only saw him once before, when I was working in a shop,” Diana tells me.
One summer morning, the young woman climbed into a minibus that should have taken her to work. But Diana, whose name has been changed here for security reasons, didn’t arrive at work that day. When she got off the bus, unknown assailants pushed her into a car and drove her to Talas, a town in the northwest of Kyrgyzstan. She tried to push them off and run away, but her abductors were stronger. They took her mobile phone. One of the men was Adilet (not his real name), a young man who had one day wandered into the shop where Diana worked. And it was he who decided to abduct and marry her.
Adilet’s family and friends didn’t leave her any choice. They forced her to marry this man, who was practically a stranger. They had a Muslim marriage, and the bride’s family were not invited to it.
