The woman with sun-shaped earrings: A household remembers a murdered daughter | Girls

This text is a collaboration between Kyrgyzstan-based media outlet Kloop and Al Jazeera and relies on reporting performed between 2022 and 2024.

Osh, Kyrgyzstan – When Mediyana Talantbekova was about 10 years previous, she would watch over her household’s calves. Someday, certainly one of them went to graze in a subject of clover, a plant that may trigger lethal bloating, and died.

Mediyana, who lived together with her household in Osh, a metropolis in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, was distressed by the calf’s dying and felt she was accountable.

When her father, Talantbek Ergeshov, a farmer, returned house that night he discovered her sitting quietly in a nook of the home. “What’s mistaken, my daughter? You appear upset,” he recalled asking her.

Mediyana began crying. “Dad, I killed a calf,” she informed him.

Talantbek comforted his daughter. “Aw my woman, don’t cry, it’s not such an issue,” he informed her. He helped her perceive that the calf’s dying was not her fault and, to cheer her up, he informed her he would take her to the bazaar the next morning to purchase a pair of earrings.

That night time, Mediyana acquired away from bed and went to wake her father. “Daddy, the solar is just not rising,” she informed him, impatient for the day to start.

When morning got here, Talantbek took his daughter to the gold bazaar to get her ears pierced. He then purchased her a pair of earrings formed like suns. He remembers how completely satisfied Mediyana was and the way she informed him: “Dad, any longer I’ll watch the calves so none of them dies.”

Twelve years later, on a winter’s day in January, Mediyana, a 22-year-old scholar, would fail to show up for her dentistry examination. Her pals, household and the police would seek for her for 9 days till her physique was found within the again yard of a home in Osh. Talantbek would go to the morgue to establish his solely daughter, the sun-shaped jewelry nonetheless in her ears.

Mediyana was murdered by a classmate who, just some weeks earlier, had drugged and raped her. The disgrace and stigma related to rape, much more so in a deeply conservative society like Kyrgyzstan, meant Mediyana initially didn’t inform anybody. As an alternative, she felt compelled to “negotiate” a wedding to her rapist to safe a future the place she might elevate her unborn baby.

‘She liked this home’

On a sunny day in early September 2022, Talantbek, 47, a small, solidly constructed man, wearing a plain white T-shirt and light-weight gray pants, stood in entrance of the one-storey yellow brick home in central Osh the place he had lived with Mediyana.

“She liked this home. Whereas we lived right here my daughter tried to do every part to make it cosy,” he mentioned, describing how Mediyana had adorned the place with potted flowers, cactuses and succulents.

When it was heat, Mediyana and Talantbek would sit on the entrance porch on “toshoks”, vibrant, burgundy-hued patchwork mattresses, consuming tea and speaking about their day.

“She was at all times a really form and smiley child — very pleasant,” Talantbek mentioned.

Mediyana spent nearly all her life in Osh – Kyrgyzstan’s second-largest metropolis after the capital Bishkek – which lies near the Uzbekistan border.

The town, which grew out of a settlement alongside historical Silk Street commerce routes, is understood for the low-lying Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain, which has lengthy attracted Muslim pilgrims and is certainly one of three Krygyz UNESCO World Heritage websites.

Easy one-storey homes line slender streets within the centre of the town of 300,000, whereas conventional eateries serve samsa, lamb or mutton pastries baked in clay ovens, and the bazaars are crowded and noisy.

In 2023, about 14 % of Osh’s inhabitants lived beneath the poverty line, incomes a median of $2 a day. For the reason that early 2000s, residents from Osh, and elsewhere within the nation, have migrated to Russia in quest of higher work alternatives.

Potato pies and late-night research

Mediyana’s household was no exception.

In 2011, her mom, Gulmayram, stopped engaged on the household farm to hitch her sister within the Russian capital to save cash to construct a brand new home. Later that yr, Talantbek, Mediyana, then 11, and her youthful brother, Adilet, then 9, joined her.

However the kids didn’t like Moscow and returned to Osh to reside with their relations. They’d go to their mother and father through the faculty holidays, and Mediyana would textual content and video name day by day with Gulmayram, who nonetheless lives there, working as a cashier in a bakery.

Adilet moved to Moscow when he was 18 and located a job in a journey company. Talantbek, who labored there as a safety guard, returned to Osh in 2018 and lived with Mediyana whereas constructing a brand new two-storey household house within the quiet suburbs, rising apples and breeding horses.

Gulmayram, 47, speaks tenderly about her daughter over a WhatsApp video name.

“She was a really caring daughter and sister. I bear in mind when me and her brother had been working within the subject, she introduced us lunch — potato pies which she’d cooked herself,” she recounted, making an attempt to carry again tears. “She was solely seven years previous then.”

Gulmayram says Mediyana was very goal-oriented.

“She was very diligent about her schooling. She would keep up as late as 1 or 2am to check,” Gulmayram recalled. “She was very desirous to study every part. She used to inform me, ‘Mum, look, I’m studying this now’. She attended English language programs …  Mediyana used to bake desserts for us and typically for her classmates’ birthdays. She was inquisitive about helpful abilities.”

She would take part in class dancing and singing contests, acquired good grades and liked to learn novels.

After the eighth grade, her mother and father determined to ship her to a prestigious Kyrgyz-Turkish faculty. Mediyana was thrilled, making ready all the appliance paperwork herself earlier than efficiently passing the doorway exams.

The buddy: Punctuality and a ‘pure coronary heart’

Dinara Raimberdieva remembers assembly Mediyana throughout a morning meeting within the eleventh grade. Dinara had simply began on the faculty and located herself standing subsequent to Mediyana.

“She requested if I used to be new,” the now 23-year-old recounted in a cellphone interview.

After the meeting, Mediyana grabbed Dinara’s hand – in a while, she would usually admire her buddy’s palms, asking, “Why do you could have such tiny, elegant palms?” and evaluating them together with her personal longer, wider ones – and took her to their English class. The 2 shortly turned shut pals.

“She might simply get acquainted with anybody, she had a really pure coronary heart,” Dinara recalled.

Mediyana had an hour-long commute to highschool with two bus adjustments. In winter, there may very well be delays on account of ice on the roads, however she was at all times punctual, arriving on time for the primary class at 8am. Whatever the climate, Mediyana’s gown and sneakers can be immaculate, her bag neatly organised and her hair tied right into a ponytail or braids.

“She moved quick,” Dinara recalled. Mediyana would say that Dinara, the extra affected person of the 2, reminded her of her mom. “When I’m hugging you, it looks like I’m hugging my mum,” she’d inform her.

She liked sporting vibrant clothes in college, typically ordering custom-made items. She by no means wore black. Dinara remembered how, “Earlier than her homicide, her final boots and jacket had been milky-coloured.”

The aspiring dentist

On the new, sprawling, partially constructed home, Talantbek pulled out a photograph album to indicate an image of Mediyana holding a certificates of honour from her college.

Mediyana was nonetheless in class when she determined to develop into a dentist. “I bear in mind as soon as, when she was a youngster, she checked out me smiling and mentioned, ‘Ata (“father” in Kyrgyz), I’ll develop into a dentist to make your enamel good,’” he recalled, laughing.

Nevertheless, after graduating from highschool in 2017, Mediyana failed the chemistry examination to check dentistry.

“She was devastated. All of us informed her to not fear and easily select one other diploma … However she refused. She mentioned, ‘No, I need to enter medical college and I need to develop into a dentist,’” Dinara recalled.

So, Mediyana took a spot yr to arrange for the following spherical of exams, which she handed, and she or he entered medical faculty at Osh State College in 2018 with a significant in dentistry. Her mother and father had been overjoyed. “I didn’t get an schooling, neither did my husband. That’s why we had been engaged in farming: crops and livestock. All our hopes had been within the schooling of our kids,” Gulmayram defined.

“There are people who find themselves afraid of formidable targets. Mediyana was not like that. She would set a purpose and would do every part to succeed in it. She at all times needed her mother and father to have wholesome enamel, saying it was one of many causes for her to develop into a dentist,” Dinara recalled.

Mediyana thought-about wholesome enamel a mark of magnificence and was conscious of her personal, by no means including sugar to her tea.

Beauty dental procedures are unaffordable on a median Kyrgyz wage however Mediyana aspired to have the ability to give this care to her family members.

Patriarchy and stigma

At college, males began to “woo” Mediyana.

In Kyrgyzstan, the standard follow of wooing, or “juuchu” in Kyrgyz, includes a younger man’s household asking a younger girl’s mother and father for permission for the potential couple to satisfy as a precursor to marriage. Normally, the woman is consulted by her household and if she agrees, her mother and father will give their blessing for the assembly to happen. Nevertheless, in uncommon circumstances, the phrases of the wedding are negotiated with out the woman’s consent.

In Kyrgyzstan, about 13 % of brides are underneath 18, in accordance with the 2019 UNICEF MICS survey, and should usually cease their schooling to work or take up home obligations.

The danger of younger girls being kidnapped and compelled into marriage additionally nonetheless exists, regardless of the follow being criminalised through the Soviet Union in 1982, and once more in 1994 after Kyrgyzstan’s independence. In 2013, the legal code was amended in order that convicted perpetrators might resist 10 years in jail.

In such circumstances, the relations of the perpetrator may attempt to persuade the kidnapped woman to marry their abductor. On this deeply patriarchal tradition, there are two key views at work – the view that if a son has chosen his bride, his household should help his alternative, and that, if a woman has entered a person’s home, leaving it might be shameful. In some circumstances, the sufferer is raped and claimed as a “spouse”, guaranteeing the stigma can be too nice for her to return to her household.

Though there are not any publicly accessible statistics on the variety of abductions, journalists from Kloop estimated that, within the nation of about 7 million, nearly 450 circumstances of abduction had been registered in 2019 and 2020, with solely 5 % of such circumstances making it to courtroom. In response to information from the Normal Prosecutor, in 2021, 560 circumstances had been registered of which 82 had been transferred to the courts.

When the primary “juuchular” – the suitor’s mother and father – approached Gulmayram, she requested a then 18-year-old Mediyana: “Kyzym (daughter), do you need to get married?”

“No, apa (mom), why?” Mediyana mentioned. “If I’d get married now, I’d not be capable of proceed my research. Let me graduate from college. There may be nonetheless loads of time to begin a household.”

Mediyana additionally informed her pals she’d marry after ending her research. “She needed [her future husband] to be good – supportive and respectful,” Dinara recalled.

SMSs and a nasty feeling

In late December 2021, Mediyana referred to as certainly one of her closest college pals.

Aijamal, who requested that her identify be modified on this story, speaks about her buddy within the current tense as if she continues to be alive, however she has bother remembering particulars on account of trauma and the time that has handed.

Mediyana informed Aijamal {that a} fellow dentistry scholar had been pursuing her for a few months. His identify was Abdulbasit Nazaraliev. He was 23.

Aijamal recalled her buddy telling her in regards to the SMS messages Abdulbasit despatched, declaring his love for Mediyana however accusing her of not taking him “as an equal”.

“I don’t need to exit with him, however he retains insisting and sending me messages,’” Mediyana informed Aijamal.

Aijamal had heard about Abdulbasit pursuing feminine classmates after which instantly reducing off contact with them. She warned Mediyana to keep away from him as “he was not a pleasant man.”

Dinara and Gulmayram additionally heard about Abdulbasit across the identical time.

Mediyana informed Dinara that he “was hitting on her and handled her in a different way”.

“Actually, I don’t know why, however I didn’t like him,” Dinara remembered pondering on the time.

She and Aijamal used the Kyrgyz expression “bir bilgeni bargo” to explain Abdulbasit. The phrase interprets as “perhaps you recognize one thing”, and refers to somebody being sly or as much as one thing.

Aijamal quickly seen a change in Mediyana’s behaviour. She turned irritable and misplaced her urge for food, saying she didn’t just like the scent of sure meals. Aijamal, who had lately conceived, suspected that her buddy was pregnant.

The assault: ‘Her imaginative and prescient went darkish’

On the afternoon of January 10, 2022, Aijamal and Mediyana had been strolling house after an examination after they stopped on a bridge on the Ak-Buura River. Mediyana appeared troubled.

“You’ve modified, Mediyana. What occurred?” Aijamal recalled asking.

Mediyana began crying and hugged her buddy tightly, unable to talk.

Then, “She mentioned, ‘Abdulbasit raped me and I believe I’m pregnant,’” Aijamal recounted. It was the primary time she had seen Mediyana crying.

Her buddy informed her that in December she was in Abdulbasit’s automotive when, after consuming from a water bottle he had given her, “her imaginative and prescient went darkish” and she or he misplaced consciousness. Then he raped her. Afterwards, he threatened that if Mediyana informed anybody, he would unfold a hearsay that she was not a virgin.

Mediyana’s household and pals have no idea the precise circumstances of the rape, or why she was in his automotive with him. She didn’t talk about that with Aijamal. And nobody is aware of if they’d any sort of relationship past the messages Abdulbasit despatched her and a few contact on the college. The one interplay Aijamal witnessed between Abdulbasit and Mediyana was him following her round on campus and talking “properly” to her. However after the rape, Abudulbasit lower contact with Mediyana and ignored her in public.

Nurzada Kupueva, a sociologist with the activist group Bishkek Feminist Initiatives, who has intently adopted Mediyana’s case, says “uyat” or disgrace in Kyrgyz and victim-blaming are the 2 fundamental explanation why Mediyana doubtless didn’t initially inform anybody or go to the police.

“These are intently related,” she defined. “In our society, if one thing occurs to a woman, she is usually blamed, regardless of how dangerous the scenario is. It’s at all times seen as a girl’s fault.”

Kupueva factors out that whereas the “uyat tradition” is stronger in rural areas than in cities, Osh, although a metropolis, is a strict, conventional society wherein “girls are much more inclined to victim-blaming.”

Kupueva believes that Mediyana could have feared being blamed if she’d reported the rape to the police.

‘Negotiating’ with a rapist

Later that day, Aijamal purchased a being pregnant take a look at from the pharmacy and took Mediyana to her home. The take a look at was constructive. “I instantly instructed telling her mother and father, so the elders might assist determine what to do,” Aijamal recounted. However Mediyana mentioned she didn’t need to make her mom really feel “ashamed and upset”.

“Let’s not inform them for now,” she informed Aijamal.

Aijamal says Mediyana despatched a photograph of the take a look at to Abdulbasit who quickly replied, “We’ll speak about it later in individual.”

Aijamal believes Mediyana met Abdulbasit the following day and recalled her buddy telling her that Abdulbasist had promised to marry her, however insisted that she have an abortion first.

Mediyana refused. “How can I kill this little tiny human being, who lives inside me?” she requested Aijamal.

Kupueva believes it might have been very tough for Mediyana to debate her scenario together with her mother and father, significantly her father, even when they had been shut. Speaking about any sort of sexual relationship, or abuse, is taboo, she defined.

Moms are additionally blamed by society, and Mediyana doubtless needed to guard each her mother and father, Kupueva added.

Mediyana would have understood her vulnerability – that to proceed learning, construct a profession and have an opportunity of a household, she needed to “‘navigate’ out of this case,” mentioned Kupueva.

“She tried to ‘negotiate’ together with her rapist,” Kupueva mentioned, and would have seen marriage to Abdulbasit as the one reply to a determined scenario.

Gulsara Ergeshova, 23, is Mediyana’s cousin.

She first heard about Abdulbasit on January 27, when she wanted dental care and Mediyana instructed that she go to Abdulbasit for therapy.

“The subsequent day, Mediyana came visiting me and as I had not seen her for some time, I used to be stunned to see how haggard she had develop into. ‘What occurred to you and who’s Abdulbasit?’” Gulsara requested her cousin, who she says was like a sister to her. “She informed me every part in regards to the rape and her being pregnant.”

Mediyana stayed with Gulsara till January 29 when, that morning, she informed her cousin she doubted Abdulbasit would marry her.

“I discovered that Abdulbasit requested a fellow classmate for a date,” Mediyana informed Gulsara. Mediyana had been decided to maintain her child. However that morning she was distressed. “I believe I’ll have an abortion,” she mentioned, upset, “as a result of he stopped returning my calls and isn’t answering my texts. He has turned out to be a liar.”

Gulsara thinks that Abdulbasit’s threats to unfold rumours about Mediyana elevated when he discovered she was pregnant. “He insisted on an abortion and so they had a number of fights about that,” Gulsara added, crying.

An examination and a disappearance

It was a cloudy Sunday morning on January 30 when Mediyana left house. She informed her father that she was going to take a seat her end-of-semester paediatric dentistry examination. Due to staffing points, the college would often schedule exams on weekends.

Talantbek says Mediyana left, however returned after a couple of minutes saying she had forgotten her purse.

“Bye, ata!” she referred to as from the doorstep. It was round 8:00am.

Twenty minutes later, Mediyana referred to as Aijamal on WhatsApp. “I requested Mediyana the place she was, and she or he replied that she was in Abdulbasit’s automotive and so they had been going to get examined for hepatitis,” Aijamal recalled. An ex-girlfriend of Abdulbasit, studying that they could have a relationship, had informed Mediyana that Abdulbasit had viral hepatitis.

“Mediyana acquired scared that the virus may very well be transferred to her child and insisted that Abdulbasit take the take a look at,” Aijamal defined.

Abdulbasit had resurfaced after ignoring Mediyana’s messages and agreed to the take a look at regardless of persevering with to push for an abortion.

Aijamal mentioned he informed Mediyana he’d get the take a look at executed to show he didn’t have it. His case file reveals he was recognized with persistent hepatitis as a baby.

The buddies agreed to talk later. Mediyana can be making use of lash extensions on Aijamal earlier than their examination so she might “fly to her husband [in Moscow] all lovely”, she recounted.

After they spoke, Mediyana despatched a voice message to Gulsara: “If one thing occurs to me, inform everybody that Abdulbasit took me … God forbid, I’m simply kidding,” she laughed nervously within the message.

Thirty minutes later, Aijamal referred to as Mediyana. She didn’t decide up. A couple of minutes later, her cellphone was switched off.

After the 1pm paediatric dentistry examination Aijamal approached Abdulbasit. “Was Mediyana with you this morning?” she requested.

“No, I’ve not seen her,” he replied.

The search

Talantbek tried to succeed in Mediyana by cellphone. She normally got here house to cook dinner lunch, which they’d eat collectively, however her cellphone was off. At first, her mother and father weren’t fearful. They thought perhaps her cellphone, which was previous and in want of changing, had damaged. However then her classmates referred to as her brother Adilet in Moscow to say she hadn’t turned up for the examination. He referred to as his mom.

“Once I heard this, my coronary heart acquired sick,” Gulmayram recalled. “She by no means might’ve missed the examination. By no means.”

Gulmayram referred to as Gulsara and requested whether or not she had seen Mediyana.

Gulsara was scared. She didn’t know react.

“I made a decision to name Abdulbasit myself,” she defined. “He answered … I attempted to confront him, saying that I do know every part about him [how he raped Mediyana], however he was so convincing about his innocence. He even supplied to assist seek for Mediyana.”

A lot of Mediyana’s family and friends had been satisfied that she had been kidnapped.

“I talked to her classmates, they knew nothing. No one suspected Abdulbasit — he confirmed up on the examination, proper?” Dinara mentioned.

Later that night time, Mediyana’s mother and father referred to as Dinara and Aijamal to ask if their daughter had contacted them. That’s when Aijamal informed Gulmayram in regards to the rape. Talantbek determined to go to the police.

CCTV and a confession

Abdulbasit was arrested on February 8 whereas crossing the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border. He confessed to murdering Mediyana and burying her physique within the again yard of his house.

The post-mortem revealed that Mediyana was murdered on January 30 – the day of the dentistry examination.

In response to Dinara Turdumatova, the lawyer for Mediyana’s household, Abdulbasit picked up Mediyana from her house, and drove to his home the place he murdered her in his automotive.

He claimed she had a knife. Safety digicam footage reveals him stopping at a store the place a salesman confirmed that he purchased a knife.

He mentioned they had been preventing after they pulled up at his home and Mediyana threw her cellphone at him. That’s when he says he stabbed her. “Abdulbasit informed the courtroom that he needed to take Mediyana to the hospital, however acquired frightened of being arrested,” Turdumatova mentioned.

He acquired out of the automotive, and, returning “20 minutes later, he realised that she was lifeless. He took her to the again yard, stabbed her eight extra occasions, lower her throat, dismembered her physique and buried her.”

In response to the case file, Abdulbasit then put the knife and the college paperwork Mediyana had together with her that day right into a bag and threw them in the bathroom outdoors his home. At round 12:05pm, he went to the college for the examination after which had lunch with classmates. He returned house at round 8pm, and threw Mediyana’s cellphone and bag into a close-by river.

In July 2022, six months after the homicide, a first-instance courtroom sentenced Abdulbasit to fifteen years in jail.

In Kyrgyzstan, receiving a life sentence for homicide is uncommon. In response to a 2020 Kloop investigation into femicide, since 2008 there have been no less than 300 circumstances of femicide in Kyrgyzstan. Kloop journalists discovered that even when the circumstances of a homicide had been according to first-degree homicide, perpetrators usually acquired sentences relevant to second-degree homicide – that’s, 10 to fifteen years in jail.

Within the case of Mediyana, the courtroom didn’t take into consideration the irritating circumstances of her homicide — her being pregnant, its brutality and the try to hide the crime by dismemberment, Turdumatova defined.

The sentence devastated Mediyana’s relations and pals who argued it was too lenient.

Mediyana’s household appealed the choice. On September 30, 2022, the Osh Regional Courtroom modified the earlier resolution and sentenced Abdulbasit to life imprisonment.

Abdulbasit’s attorneys issued an attraction on the Supreme Courtroom to reinstate the unique sentence. On February 1, 2023, the Supreme Courtroom upheld the choice. Abdulbasit will spend his life in jail.

‘I look forward to my daughter’

Mediyana was buried in Osh on February 9, 2022.

Quickly after her funeral, Gulmayram and Talantbek despatched Adilet again to Moscow, hoping the space can be a distraction, however he would name Gulmayran day by day crying.

“He’s tortured inside,” Gulmayram mentioned.

After Abdulbasit’s conviction, Gulmayram additionally returned to Moscow. She couldn’t bear to remain in Osh. The agony of shedding her daughter, she believes, has precipitated her eyesight to worsen and she or he suffers from a broken nerve.

However she says the life sentence means “justice was executed”.

“We hold asking ourselves: Why? Why did he must homicide her? It’s only a lot to soak up — why would somebody convey a lot violence to the lifetime of our daughter and make her undergo that a lot?” requested Gulmayram, her voice heavy with grief. “What I can solely do now’s to wish that God will punish him. That’s it.”

Talantbek, who’s normally composed, breaks down when he remembers seeing his daughter’s physique within the morgue. Mediyana had regarded a lot the identical because the final time he noticed her, on that Sunday morning 9 days earlier than. In her ears had been the little suns he had purchased her. “I purchased these earrings when she was in fourth grade and she or he had them on her,” he mirrored.

Talantbek can’t fathom that Mediyana is gone. He retains ready for her to return. He has left her belongings in her room untouched — her potted flowers, her Quran and her rolled prayer rug.

“I perceive that I’ve to maneuver this stuff round sometime,” he mentioned, wanting into the space. “However I can’t assist it — I look forward to my daughter, wanting on the door and pondering perhaps she is going to enter the home as we speak or tomorrow.”