The lady with sun-shaped earrings: A household remembers a murdered daughter | Ladies

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

Osh, Kyrgyzstan – When Mediyana Talantbekova was about 10 years previous, she would watch over her household’s calves. Sooner or later, one among them went to graze in a discipline 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 demise and felt she was responsible.

When her father, Talantbek Ergeshov, a farmer, returned dwelling that night he discovered her sitting quietly in a nook of the home. “What’s flawed, 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 lady, don’t cry, it’s not such an issue,” he informed her. He helped her perceive that the calf’s demise 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 evening, Mediyana received off the bed and went to wake her father. “Daddy, the solar isn’t 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 pleased Mediyana was and the way she informed him: “Dad, any further 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 increase her unborn youngster.

‘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 the whole lot to make it cosy,” he mentioned, describing how Mediyana had embellished 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.

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

Easy one-storey homes line slim 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 p.c of Osh’s inhabitants lived beneath the poverty line, incomes a mean 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 affix 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 dwell with their relations. They might 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 dwelling 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 have been working within the discipline, 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 review,” Gulmayram recalled. “She was very wanting to be taught the whole lot. She used to inform me, ‘Mum, look, I’m studying this now’. She attended English language programs …  Mediyana used to bake muffins for us and typically for her classmates’ birthdays. She was occupied with helpful abilities.”

She would take part in class dancing and singing contests, received 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, getting ready all the appliance paperwork herself earlier than efficiently passing the doorway exams.

The good friend: 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 telephone interview.

After the meeting, Mediyana grabbed Dinara’s hand – in a while, she would usually admire her good friend’s fingers, asking, “Why do you’ve gotten such tiny, elegant fingers?” and evaluating them together with her personal longer, wider ones – and took her to their English class. The 2 shortly grew to become 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 could possibly be delays as a result 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 could 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 appears like I’m hugging my mum,” she’d inform her.

She liked sporting vivid 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 have 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 young person, 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 review 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 niche 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 serious in dentistry. Her mother and father have been overjoyed. “I didn’t get an schooling, neither did my husband. That’s why we have been engaged in farming: crops and livestock. All our hopes have been within the schooling of our youngsters,” Gulmayram defined.

“There are people who find themselves afraid of bold objectives. Mediyana was not like that. She would set a aim and would do the whole lot to succeed in it. She at all times wished 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 of 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 mean 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 normal observe of wooing, or “juuchu” in Kyrgyz, includes a younger man’s household asking a younger lady’s mother and father for permission for the potential couple to satisfy as a precursor to marriage. Often, the lady 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 lady’s consent.

In Kyrgyzstan, about 13 p.c of brides are beneath 18, in response to 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 observe being criminalised through the Soviet Union in 1982, and once more in 1994 after Kyrgyzstan’s independence. In 2013, the prison code was amended in order that convicted perpetrators might withstand 10 years in jail.

In such circumstances, the relations of the perpetrator would possibly attempt to persuade the kidnapped lady 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 assist his alternative, and that, if a lady 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 could be too nice for her to return to her household.

Though there aren’t any publicly out there statistics on the variety of abductions, journalists from Kloop estimated that, within the nation of about 7 million, nearly 450 circumstances of abduction have been registered in 2019 and 2020, with solely 5 p.c of such circumstances making it to courtroom. In keeping with information from the Normal Prosecutor, in 2021, 560 circumstances have been registered of which 82 have 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 might not have the ability to proceed my research. Let me graduate from college. There’s nonetheless loads of time to start out a household.”

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

SMSs and a nasty feeling

In late December 2021, Mediyana known as one among her closest college pals.

Aijamal, who requested that her identify be modified on this story, speaks about her good friend within the current tense as if she remains to be alive, however she has hassle remembering particulars as a result 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 good friend 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 out of the blue chopping 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 similar time.

Mediyana informed Dinara that he “was hitting on her and handled her otherwise”.

“Actually, I don’t know why, however I didn’t like him,” Dinara remembered considering 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 grew to become 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 good friend was pregnant.

The assault: ‘Her imaginative and prescient went darkish’

On the afternoon of January 10, 2022, Aijamal and Mediyana have been strolling dwelling 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 good friend 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 good friend informed her that in December she was in Abdulbasit’s automobile 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 automobile with him. She didn’t focus on 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 reduce 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 foremost the reason why Mediyana doubtless didn’t initially inform anybody or go to the police.

“These are intently linked,” she defined. “In our society, if one thing occurs to a lady, she is usually blamed, regardless of how dangerous the state of affairs 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 during which “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 check from the pharmacy and took Mediyana to her home. The check was optimistic. “I instantly urged 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 check to Abdulbasit who quickly replied, “We’ll discuss it later in individual.”

Aijamal believes Mediyana met Abdulbasit the following day and recalled her good friend 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 state of affairs together with her mother and father, notably her father, even when they have been shut. Speaking about any sort of sexual relationship, or abuse, is taboo, she defined.

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

Mediyana would have understood her vulnerability – that to proceed finding out, construct a profession and have an opportunity of a household, she needed to “‘navigate’ out of this example,” 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 state of affairs.

Gulsara Ergeshova, 23, is Mediyana’s cousin.

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

“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 the whole lot 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 dwelling. She informed her father that she was going to sit down her end-of-semester paediatric dentistry examination. Due to staffing points, the school would sometimes schedule exams on weekends.

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

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

Twenty minutes later, Mediyana known as Aijamal on WhatsApp. “I requested Mediyana the place she was, and she or he replied that she was in Abdulbasit’s automobile and so they have 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 received scared that the virus could possibly be transferred to her child and insisted that Abdulbasit take the check,” Aijamal defined.

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

Aijamal mentioned he informed Mediyana he’d get the check achieved to show he didn’t have it. His case file exhibits he was identified with persistent hepatitis as a toddler.

The buddies agreed to talk later. Mediyana could be making use of lash extensions on Aijamal earlier than their examination so she might “fly to her husband [in Moscow] all stunning”, 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 known as Mediyana. She didn’t decide up. A couple of minutes later, her telephone 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 telephone. She often got here dwelling to cook dinner lunch, which they’d eat collectively, however her telephone was off. At first, her mother and father weren’t frightened. They thought perhaps her telephone, which was previous and in want of changing, had damaged. However then her classmates known as her brother Adilet in Moscow to say she hadn’t turned up for the examination. He known as his mom.

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

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

Gulsara was scared. She didn’t know the way to react.

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

A lot of Mediyana’s family and friends have 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 evening, Mediyana’s mother and father known 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 dwelling.

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

In keeping with Dinara Turdumatova, the lawyer for Mediyana’s household, Abdulbasit picked up Mediyana from her dwelling, and drove to his home the place he murdered her in his automobile.

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

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

He received out of the automobile, and, returning “20 minutes later, he realised that she was useless. He took her to the again yard, stabbed her eight extra occasions, reduce her throat, dismembered her physique and buried her.”

In keeping with 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 dwelling at round 8pm, and threw Mediyana’s telephone 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 keeping with a 2020 Kloop investigation into femicide, since 2008 there have been a minimum of 300 circumstances of femicide in Kyrgyzstan. Kloop journalists discovered that even when the circumstances of a homicide have been in keeping with 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 have in mind the annoying 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 Court docket modified the earlier resolution and sentenced Abdulbasit to life imprisonment.

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

‘I anticipate 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 gap could 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 dropping her daughter, she believes, has prompted her eyesight to worsen and she or he suffers from a broken nerve.

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

“We hold asking ourselves: Why? Why did he should homicide her? It’s only a lot to absorb — why would somebody deliver 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 could be to wish that God will punish him. That’s it.”

Talantbek, who’s often 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 have 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 not 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, trying into the gap. “However I can’t assist it — I anticipate my daughter, trying on the door and considering perhaps she’s going to enter the home as we speak or tomorrow.”