The woman 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 previous, she would watch over her household’s calves. Sooner or later, certainly one of them went to graze in a area 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 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 flawed, 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 woman, don’t cry, it’s not such an issue,” he advised her. He helped her perceive that the calf’s demise 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 night time, Mediyana acquired away from bed and went to wake her father. “Daddy, the solar will not be 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 blissful Mediyana was and the way she advised him: “Dad, to any extent 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 mates, 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 an alternative, she felt compelled to “negotiate” a wedding to her rapist to safe a future the place she may elevate her unborn little one.

‘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.

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 p.c of Osh’s inhabitants lived under the poverty line, incomes a mean of $2 a day. Because the 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 12 months, 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 dwell with their kin. They’d go to their mother and father through the college holidays, and Mediyana would textual content and video name each 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 keep 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, 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 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 excited about helpful expertise.”

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 college. Mediyana was thrilled, making ready all the appliance 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 college 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 – afterward, she would usually admire her pal’s palms, asking, “Why do you’ve got such tiny, elegant palms?” and evaluating them together with her personal longer, wider ones – and took her to their English class. The 2 shortly grew to become shut mates.

“She may 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 as a result of 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 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, 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 indicate an image of Mediyana holding a certificates of honour from her college.

Mediyana was nonetheless in class when she determined to change into a dentist. “I keep in mind as soon as, when she was a teen, 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 advised 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 spot 12 months to arrange for the following spherical of exams, which she handed, and he or she entered medical college at Osh State College in 2018 with a significant 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 bold objectives. Mediyana was not like that. She would set a aim and would do all the pieces to succeed in it. She all the time needed her mother and father 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 aware 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, entails a younger man’s household asking a younger girl’s mother and father for permission for the potential couple to fulfill 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 instances, the phrases of the wedding are negotiated with out the woman’s consent.

In Kyrgyzstan, about 13 p.c of brides are beneath 18, in accordance with the 2019 UNICEF MICS survey, and should usually cease their training to work or take up home duties.

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 felony code was amended in order that convicted perpetrators may resist 10 years in jail.

In such instances, the kin 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 selection, and that, if a woman has entered a person’s home, leaving it will be shameful. In some instances, the sufferer is raped and claimed as a “spouse”, making certain the stigma can be too nice for her to return to her household.

Though there are not any publicly out there statistics on the variety of abductions, journalists from Kloop estimated that, within the nation of about 7 million, nearly 450 instances of abduction have been registered in 2019 and 2020, with solely 5 p.c of such instances making it to court docket. In response to knowledge from the Normal Prosecutor, in 2021, 560 instances 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’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 advised her mates she’d marry after ending her research. “She needed [her future husband] to be excellent – supportive and respectful,” Dinara recalled.

SMSs and a nasty feeling

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

Aijamal, who requested that her identify be modified on this story, speaks about her pal 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 advised 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 concerning 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 advised Aijamal.

Aijamal had heard about Abdulbasit pursuing feminine classmates after which out of the blue 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 considering on the time.

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

Aijamal quickly observed 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 pal 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 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 feel I’m pregnant,’” Aijamal recounted. It was the primary time she had seen Mediyana crying.

Her pal advised 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 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 mates have no idea the precise circumstances of the rape, or why she was in his automotive with him. She didn’t focus on that with Aijamal. And nobody is aware of if that they had 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 carefully adopted Mediyana’s case, says “uyat” or disgrace in Kyrgyz and victim-blaming are the 2 predominant explanation why Mediyana seemingly 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 woman, she is usually blamed, irrespective of how unhealthy the scenario is. It’s all the time seen as a lady’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 vulnerable 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 urged telling her mother and father, so the elders may 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 advised 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 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 will have been very tough for Mediyana to debate her scenario 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 seemingly 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 urged that she go to Abdulbasit for remedy.

“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 advised me all the pieces concerning 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 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 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 automotive 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 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 advised Mediyana he’d get the take a look at achieved to show he didn’t have it. His case file reveals he was recognized with persistent hepatitis as a toddler.

The chums agreed to talk later. Mediyana can be making use of lash extensions on Aijamal earlier than their examination so she may “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 referred to as Mediyana. She didn’t choose 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 house to cook dinner lunch, which they’d eat collectively, however her telephone was off. At first, her mother and father weren’t anxious. They thought perhaps her telephone, 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.

“After I heard this, my coronary heart acquired 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 learn how 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.”

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 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 advised Gulmayram concerning 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 digital camera footage reveals 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 advised the court docket that he needed to take Mediyana to the hospital, however acquired fearful 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 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 telephone 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 response to a 2020 Kloop investigation into femicide, since 2008 there have been at the least 300 instances 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 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 consider 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 kin and mates 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 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 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 space can 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 dropping her daughter, she believes, has induced her eyesight to worsen and he or she suffers from a broken nerve.

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

“We preserve asking ourselves: Why? Why did he need to 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 endure 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 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’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 these items round sometime,” he mentioned, wanting into the space. “However I can’t assist it — I anticipate my daughter, wanting on the door and considering perhaps she’s going to enter the home immediately or tomorrow.”