The Channel 4 news blog highlights a heart-warming story set within the harsh regime of Afghanistan, the wedding of Faramarz and Samia.
Faramarz is a security guard in a women’s refuge where Samia, his new bride, had sought solace and safety. She had been kidnapped and gang-raped by eight armed men hundreds of miles north west of the Afghan capital. Her father had lodged an official complaint with the authorities yet this only prompted death threats from the gang itself. The family was forced to leave their farm and to flee to Kabul, where Samia sought and found refuge.
"In that she was unusual," writes correspondent Kylie Morris, as "many young women turn to self harm or suicide. Others are killed by their own families who can’t bear the shame".
But Samia met Faramarz and fell in love and the couple have just married.
Their story is both touching and inspiring, but as Kylie Morris writes, "In the wider scheme of Afghanistan’s persistent repression of women, trenchantly resistant to external pressure for change, it is a small story of liberation on the margins."
