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 performed 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, 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 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 mistaken, my daughter? You appear upset,” he recalled asking her.

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

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

That evening, Mediyana bought off the bed and went to wake her father. “Daddy, the solar shouldn’t be rising,” she instructed 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 glad Mediyana was and the way she instructed 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 determine his solely daughter, the sun-shaped jewelry nonetheless in her ears.

Mediyana was murdered by a classmate who, only a few 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 youngster.

‘She beloved 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 beloved this home. Whereas we lived right here my daughter tried to do every part 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, ingesting tea and speaking about their day.

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

Mediyana spent virtually 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 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 slim streets within the centre of 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 under 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 seeking 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 youngsters didn’t like Moscow and returned to Osh to stay with their family. They might go to their dad and mom 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 keep 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 review,” Gulmayram recalled. “She was very desirous to be taught 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 generally for her classmates’ birthdays. She was considering helpful expertise.”

She would take part at school dancing and singing contests, bought good grades and beloved to learn novels.

After the eighth grade, her dad and mom determined to ship her to a prestigious Kyrgyz-Turkish faculty. Mediyana was thrilled, getting ready all the applying paperwork herself earlier than efficiently passing the doorway exams.

The pal: 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 typically admire her pal’s arms, asking, “Why do you’ve such tiny, elegant arms?” and evaluating them together with her personal longer, wider ones – and took her to their English class. The 2 rapidly 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 high school with two bus adjustments. In winter, there may very well be delays resulting from 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 costume 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 looks like I’m hugging my mum,” she’d inform her.

She beloved carrying vibrant clothes in college, generally 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 point out an image of Mediyana holding a certificates of honour from her college.

Mediyana was nonetheless at school when she determined to change into a dentist. “I keep in mind as soon as, when she was a young person, she checked out me smiling and mentioned, ‘Ata (“father” in Kyrgyz), I’ll change into a dentist to make your tooth excellent,’” he recalled, laughing.

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

“She was devastated. All of us instructed 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 change into a dentist,’” Dinara recalled.

So, Mediyana took a niche yr to organize for the following spherical of exams, which she handed, and he or she entered medical faculty at Osh State College in 2018 with a significant in dentistry. Her dad and mom 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 youngsters,” Gulmayram defined.

“There are people who find themselves afraid of bold targets. Mediyana was not like that. She would set a aim and would do every part to succeed in it. She at all times wished her dad and mom to have wholesome tooth, saying it was one of many causes for her to change into a dentist,” Dinara recalled.

Mediyana thought of wholesome tooth 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 apply of wooing, or “juuchu” in Kyrgyz, entails a younger man’s household asking a younger girl’s dad and mom for permission for the potential couple to satisfy as a precursor to marriage. Normally, the lady is consulted by her household and if she agrees, her dad and mom will give their blessing for the assembly to happen. Nevertheless, in uncommon instances, 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 line with the 2019 UNICEF MICS survey, and should typically cease their schooling to work or take up home obligations.

The chance of younger ladies being kidnapped and compelled into marriage additionally nonetheless exists, regardless of the apply 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 withstand 10 years in jail.

In such instances, the family 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 woman has entered a person’s home, leaving it might be shameful. In some instances, the sufferer is raped and claimed as a “spouse”, making certain 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, virtually 450 instances of abduction had been registered in 2019 and 2020, with solely 5 p.c of such instances making it to court docket. In accordance with information from the Basic Prosecutor, in 2021, 560 instances had been registered of which 82 had been transferred to the courts.

When the primary “juuchular” – the suitor’s dad and mom – 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 to proceed my research. Let me graduate from college. There may be nonetheless loads of time to start out a household.”

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

SMSs and a nasty feeling

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

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

Mediyana instructed 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 pal 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 instructed Aijamal.

Aijamal had heard about Abdulbasit pursuing feminine classmates after which all of a sudden 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 similar time.

Mediyana instructed Dinara that he “was hitting on her and handled her in another way”.

“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 “possibly you understand one thing”, and refers to somebody being sly or as much as one thing.

Aijamal quickly observed 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 pal was pregnant.

The assault: ‘Her imaginative and prescient went darkish’

On the afternoon of January 10, 2022, Aijamal and Mediyana had 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 pal 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 pal instructed her that in December she was in Abdulbasit’s automobile when, after ingesting from a water bottle he had given her, “her imaginative and prescient went darkish” and he or she misplaced consciousness. Then he raped her. Afterwards, he threatened that if Mediyana instructed 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 talk about that with Aijamal. And nobody is aware of if that they had any type 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 minimize 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 primary the explanation why Mediyana probably 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 woman, she is usually blamed, regardless of how unhealthy 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 wherein “ladies 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 advised telling her dad and mom, so the elders might assist resolve 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 instructed Aijamal.

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

Aijamal believes Mediyana met Abdulbasit the following day and recalled her pal 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 troublesome for Mediyana to debate her state of affairs together with her dad and mom, significantly her father, even when they had been shut. Speaking about any type of sexual relationship, or abuse, is taboo, she defined.

Moms are additionally blamed by society, and Mediyana probably wished to guard each her dad and mom, 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 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 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 advised that she go to Abdulbasit for therapy.

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

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

“I came upon that Abdulbasit requested a fellow classmate for a date,” Mediyana instructed 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 came upon she was pregnant. “He insisted on an abortion they usually 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 instructed her father that she was going to take a seat 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 he or she replied that she was in Abdulbasit’s automobile they usually had been going to get examined for hepatitis,” Aijamal recalled. An ex-girlfriend of Abdulbasit, studying that they may have a relationship, had instructed Mediyana that Abdulbasit had viral hepatitis.

“Mediyana bought 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 instructed Mediyana he’d get the take a look at performed to show he didn’t have it. His case file reveals he was recognized with persistent hepatitis as a baby.

The chums 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 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 known as Mediyana. She didn’t choose 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 dwelling to cook dinner lunch, which they’d eat collectively, however her cellphone was off. At first, her dad and mom weren’t frightened. They thought possibly her cellphone, 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.

“After I heard this, my coronary heart bought 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 how one can 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 person suspected Abdulbasit — he confirmed up on the examination, proper?” Dinara mentioned.

Later that evening, Mediyana’s dad and mom known as Dinara and Aijamal to ask if their daughter had contacted them. That’s when Aijamal instructed 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 accordance 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 digicam footage reveals him stopping at a store the place a salesman confirmed that he purchased a knife.

He mentioned they had been combating after they pulled up at his home and Mediyana threw her cellphone at him. That’s when he says he stabbed her. “Abdulbasit instructed the court docket that he wished to take Mediyana to the hospital, however bought petrified of being arrested,” Turdumatova mentioned.

He bought 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 instances, minimize her throat, dismembered her physique and buried her.”

In accordance 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 exterior 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 cellphone and bag into a close-by river.

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

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

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

The sentence devastated Mediyana’s family 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 choice and sentenced Abdulbasit to life imprisonment.

Abdulbasit’s attorneys issued an attraction 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 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 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 precipitated her eyesight to worsen and he or she suffers from a broken nerve.

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

“We preserve asking ourselves: Why? Why did he must homicide her? It’s only a lot to absorb — 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 he or she 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 these items round sometime,” he mentioned, trying into the space. “However I can’t assist it — I look forward to my daughter, trying on the door and considering possibly she is going to enter the home right now or tomorrow.”