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

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Osh, Kyrgyzstan – When Mediyana Talantbekova was about 10 years outdated, she would watch over her household’s calves.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

Mediyana, who lived along with her household in Osh, a metropolis in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, was distressed by the calf’s loss of life and felt she was responsible.

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

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

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

That evening, Mediyana obtained away from bed and went to wake her father. “Daddy, the solar isn’t rising,” she advised 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 advised him: “Dad, any more 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 buddies, 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, 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 a substitute, she felt compelled to “negotiate” a wedding to her rapist to safe a future the place she may 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 all the pieces 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 all the time a really type 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 historical Silk Highway commerce routes, is thought for the low-lying Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain, which has lengthy attracted Muslim pilgrims and is one in all 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 beneath the poverty line, incomes a median of $2 a day. Because the 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 12 months, 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 family. They might go to their mother and father through the college 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 have been working within the area, she introduced us lunch — potato pies which she’d cooked herself,” she recounted, attempting to carry again tears. “She was solely seven years outdated then.”

Gulmayram says Mediyana was very goal-oriented.

“She was very diligent about her training. She would keep up as late as 1 or 2am to review,” Gulmayram recalled. “She was very desperate to be taught all the pieces. 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 generally for her classmates’ birthdays. She was thinking about helpful expertise.”

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

After the eighth grade, her mother and father determined to ship her to a prestigious Kyrgyz-Turkish college. 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 college 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 arms, asking, “Why do you have got such tiny, elegant arms?” and evaluating them along with her personal longer, wider ones – and took her to their English class. The 2 shortly turned shut buddies.

“She may 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 modifications. In winter, there may very well be delays resulting from ice on the roads, however she was all the time punctual, arriving on time for the primary class at 8am. Whatever the climate, Mediyana’s costume and footwear 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 liked sporting 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 have 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 turn out to be 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 turn out to be 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 advised her to not fear and easily select one other diploma … However she refused. She mentioned, ‘No, I wish to enter medical college and I wish to turn out to be a dentist,’” Dinara recalled.

So, Mediyana took a niche 12 months to organize for the subsequent spherical of exams, which she handed, and he or she entered medical college at Osh State College in 2018 with a serious in dentistry. Her mother and father have been overjoyed. “I didn’t get an training, neither did my husband. That’s why we have been engaged in farming: crops and livestock. All our hopes have been within the training 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 all the pieces to achieve it. She all the time needed her mother and father to have wholesome tooth, saying it was one of many causes for her to turn out to be 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 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 normal observe of wooing, or “juuchu” in Kyrgyz, entails 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. 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 below 18, in accordance with the 2019 UNICEF MICS survey, and should usually cease their training to work or take up home obligations.

The danger of younger ladies 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 legal code was amended in order that convicted perpetrators may withstand 10 years in jail.

In such circumstances, 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 help 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 obtainable 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. Based on knowledge 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 wish 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’s nonetheless loads of time to start out a household.”

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

SMSs and a foul feeling

In late December 2021, Mediyana referred to as one in all her closest college buddies.

Aijamal, who requested that her title 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 resulting from trauma and the time that has handed.

Mediyana advised Aijamal {that a} fellow dentistry scholar had been pursuing her for a few months. His title 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 wish to exit with him, however he retains insisting and sending me messages,’” Mediyana advised Aijamal.

Aijamal had heard about Abdulbasit pursuing feminine classmates after which abruptly slicing 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 advised 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 pondering on the time.

She and Aijamal used the Kyrgyz expression “bir bilgeni bargo” to explain Abdulbasit. The phrase interprets as “perhaps you already know 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 odor 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 have been strolling house after an examination once 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 feel I’m pregnant,’” Aijamal recounted. It was the primary time she had seen Mediyana crying.

Her buddy advised 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 he or she misplaced consciousness. Then he raped her. Afterwards, he threatened that if Mediyana advised anybody, he would unfold a hearsay that she was not a virgin.

Mediyana’s household and buddies 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 that they had any form 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 carefully adopted Mediyana’s case, says “uyat” or disgrace in Kyrgyz and victim-blaming are the 2 major explanation why Mediyana doubtless didn’t initially inform anybody or go to the police.

“These are carefully linked,” she defined. “In our society, if one thing occurs to a lady, she is usually blamed, irrespective of how unhealthy the state of affairs is. It’s all the time 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 by which “ladies are much more inclined to victim-blaming.”

Kupueva believes that Mediyana might 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 recommended telling her mother and father, so the elders may assist resolve what to do,” Aijamal recounted. However Mediyana mentioned she didn’t wish to make her mom really feel “ashamed and upset”.

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

Aijamal says Mediyana despatched a photograph of the take a look at to Abdulbasit who quickly replied, “We are going to discuss it later in individual.”

Aijamal believes Mediyana met Abdulbasit the subsequent 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 troublesome for Mediyana to debate her state of affairs along with her mother and father, notably her father, even when they have been shut. Speaking about any form 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 example,” mentioned Kupueva.

“She tried to ‘negotiate’ along 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 recommended 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 shocked to see how haggard she had turn out to be. ‘What occurred to you and who’s Abdulbasit?’” Gulsara requested her cousin, who she says was like a sister to her. “She advised me all the pieces in regards to the rape and her being pregnant.”

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

“I discovered that Abdulbasit requested a fellow classmate for a date,” Mediyana advised Gulsara. Mediyana had been decided to maintain her child. However that morning she was distressed. “I feel 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 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 house. She advised her father that she was going to sit down 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 he or she replied that she was in Abdulbasit’s automobile they usually have been going to get examined for hepatitis,” Aijamal recalled. An ex-girlfriend of Abdulbasit, studying that they could have a relationship, had advised Mediyana that Abdulbasit had viral hepatitis.

“Mediyana obtained 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 advised Mediyana he’d get the take a look at finished to show he didn’t have it. His case file reveals he was recognized with power 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 may “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 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 achieve 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 outdated 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 obtained sick,” Gulmayram recalled. “She by no means may’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 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 all the pieces about him [how he raped Mediyana], however he was so convincing about his innocence. He even provided to assist seek for Mediyana.”

Lots of Mediyana’s family and friends have 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 mother and father referred to as Dinara and Aijamal to ask if their daughter had contacted them. That’s when Aijamal advised 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.

Based on 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 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 have been combating once they pulled up at his home and Mediyana threw her cellphone at him. That’s when he says he stabbed her. “Abdulbasit advised the courtroom that he needed to take Mediyana to the hospital, however obtained afraid of being arrested,” Turdumatova mentioned.

He obtained 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, minimize her throat, dismembered her physique and buried her.”

Based on the case file, Abdulbasit then put the knife and the college paperwork Mediyana had along 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 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. Based on 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 have 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 bear in mind the annoying circumstances of her homicide — her being pregnant, its brutality and the try to hide the crime by means of dismemberment, Turdumatova defined.

The sentence devastated Mediyana’s family and buddies who argued it was too lenient.

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

Abdulbasit’s legal professionals 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 watch for 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 every single 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 brought on her eyesight to worsen and he or she suffers from a broken nerve.

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

“We maintain asking ourselves: Why? Why did he should homicide her? It’s only a lot to soak up — why would somebody carry 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 normally composed, breaks down when he remembers seeing his daughter’s physique within the morgue. Mediyana had appeared 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 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 watch for my daughter, trying on the door and pondering perhaps she is going to enter the home right now or tomorrow.”